


like only a best friend could

by crackers4jenn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:06:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackers4jenn/pseuds/crackers4jenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The awesome thing about high school is that you can be a little bit gay without being all the way gay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like only a best friend could

The awesome thing about high school is that you can be a little bit gay without being all the way gay.

At least, that's what Dean's hoping for and it's the rationalization he uses to explain his attraction to Castiel. Who is his best friend.

BFFs since they were like fetuses, too, which pretty much _also_ makes this incest.

So, basically, Dean is screwed.

But. Okay, the thing is, he's pretty sure he's not _gay_ -gay. He's only just situationally gay. He's tried the dude-on-dude porn thing and it only stressed him out and made him worry about his browser history, not to mention, here is a fact: Dean likes boobs.

"What?" Cas says out of nowhere, currently perched on Dean's bed. He's flipping through some book while Dean, as has become the norm, lies on the floor and fights off a mini-crisis.

Cas looks concerned that Dean might be wallowing, which he's not, so he does his best to convince him he's fine. He arranges his face into whatever the equivalent of 'I wasn't thinking about having sex with you, jesus christ, Cas' is and repeats, "What?"

It's a pretty crappy deflection and Cas sees right through it. "Did something happen today?"

Cas likes to think that any time he softens his voice and pins Dean with his 'you're my best friend' eyes, Dean'll spill whatever's bugging him. And, yeah, so it works like 99% of the time, but Dean can't exactly fess up to his heart's big gay boner for him, now can he?

If he loses Cas -- if they stopped being friends -- Dean's not sure he could handle that kind of blow. Cas has been so constantly a fixture in Dean's life, he can't imagine it otherwise. He was there when Dean's mom died, he's been there through his dad going MIA on them. He's been as much of a brother as Sammy, but more because Dean's the only person Cas lets in. No one else knows that Cas's mom is a legit wackjob who forces her kid to sit in a chair and read the Bible, or that the only reason his dad took off too is because he didn't want to be a father anymore.

They're fucked up, but they're fucked up together, and maybe that's the problem. Because they're both 18 now and Cas is going off to college and Dean's. Well, Dean's probably headed for a fun future of 'would you like fries with that?' and sometimes it scares him so much he thinks about running away too. Like their dads.

"Dean." Cas is swinging his legs off the bed, setting his book aside.

Well, damn, Dean must really be a pathetic sight if Cas is putting down _1984_. Cas is worryingly obsessed with the thing.

Dean laughs. That it sounds nuts isn't his damn fault. "I'm fine," he tells Cas. To prove it, he tosses him a thumbs up.

"You're not 'fine,'" Cas says, and he finger-quotes it, the bastard actually finger-quotes it, holy shit, Dean is so in love with him, "but obviously you don't want to talk."

Dean gives him another thumbs up from his spot on the floor.

"Dean," Cas sighs.

"Cas," Dean copies.

Part of his plan to de-gay himself from Cas is to push him away. The only problem with that is that Cas takes it to mean Dean's lashing out because he's emotionally constipated, so he combats Dean's doings and they wind up even closer.

So maybe Dean's doing it on purpose now. Or whatever. He's not Freud.

Cas gets off the bed and crosses over creaky floorboards to Dean. He's wearing fuzzy blue socks Dean's told him a million times before make him look like a dweeb, but Dean might also be wearing the matching green pair Cas gave him for his birthday, so.

There's a whoosh of air and then Cas is laid out next to him. Dean, because he's a creep, feels his dick twitch at the same time his heart decides to race the air in his lungs to see which can escape out of him the fastest. Obviously his breath wins, but his heart winds up somewhere halfway up his throat, and all because of a little proximity with his best friend.

"I'm fine," he assures Cas again right away.

"Me too," Cas says back, which is code for: Cas is having a shitty day and Dean's being a selfish asshole.

Cas reaches down and grabs Dean's hand. Which isn't new. There was a phase after Cas' dad left where Dean was pretty much a physical anchor for Cas to keep hold of when he needed it, expert on 'deadbeat dads' that he is.

Dean grabs back and Cas says, "I need to confess."

That's Cas' mom's doings. Naomi. The friggin' bitch. Dean only hates her so much because of, well, the shit she's done to Cas, mostly, but also because she cornered Dean one visit, looked him square in the eye, and tsked real motherly, 'I only wish he felt the same way.' Dean's avoided her ever since.

"You okay, Cas?" Dean asks him.

"I'm... afraid," he admits.

Right away, Dean's heart drops back down to his chest and starts thrashing around like it's gone feral. When it comes to family, he's got a real fierce protective streak. "Okay." He makes himself swallow. "About?"

Cas' grip goes slack and he tries to let go. Dean squeezes tighter, then Cas says, "You."

Dean pulls away like he's been zapped. He can't hear over the white noise in his ears, he might be the world's youngest person to be having a stroke, and he's pretty sure Cas has caught wind of Dean's feelings and thinks he's some kinda pervy sex predator now, so Dean's gotta go drown himself.

"Dean," Cas says, catching his sleeve.

Dean struggles to sit up so he can... whatever's a more manly word for 'flee,' but Cas won't let him.

Cas is grunting, "Will you stop," until he's literally pinned Dean face-down to the floor.

Ha, joke's on Cas because Dean's jerked off to fantasies that started out just like this and, jesus christ, something is wrong with him. There is something screwed up so damn bad inside of him, he's a freak, he's so messed up--

Cas digs his elbows into Dean's shoulder blades until Dean sags, fight knocked out of him.

"Cas," he croaks, muffled by the pile of dirty clothes Cas has wrestled him into. If this is it -- if Cas is done with him -- he just wants it to go quick.

"Is it you or me you think so little of?" Cas demands, grounding it out in Dean's ear.

Dean plants his palms on the floor and shoves Cas off of him. Cas must've been expecting something like that to happen, though, because he doesn't topple all the way over.

Dean sits on his ass with a glare, wiping a hand across his mouth. The dig at his self-esteem is a low fucking blow, besides being a source of constant contention between them.

Cas is glaring too from his spot sprawled out beside Dean, chest heaving. He looks as pissed as he was the one and only time Dean got stupid-drunk at a party and drove himself home. Cas had socked him in the jaw and called him selfish for that, and they didn't talk for almost two weeks after.

Finally Cas sits up, some foot or so between them. He looks away, clenching his jaw. "We've been through much together, you and I," he starts, and this is it, this is Cas saying goodbye. Dean gets desperate.

"I love you," he blurts, because, fuck it. If he's going out, he's going out blazing.

Cas stares. Dean feels like he might actually throw up, like his skin is being shrink-wrapped, and Cas is just staring.

Dean smiles. It's manic-looking and he most likely resembles a serial killer, but he slaps that baby on and cuffs Cas across the back, patting him twice. "Okay, good talk," he says, 100% fake, denial is his new best friend, only it makes Cas jolt back to.

"Dean," he says.

Dean removes his hand and lays back down on the floor, because now he actually is going to wallow.

"Dean," Cas says again, a little louder.

Dean crosses his hands over the lower part of his stomach and stares at the ceiling. If you think about it, 18 years is a long time to know someone. Hell, he's impressed he managed to last this long before Cas gave up on him.

Cas slaps his hand to the ground and positions himself so he's braced over Dean, bracketing him in, their faces just inches apart. They're also pressed together at the hips.

Dean, feeling either very brave or very, very stupid, meets the gaze Cas forces him into. And he feels his resolve to play this whole thing off crash and burn because Cas is looking back at him like Dean went all Mortal Kombat on his heart, like he reached inside and personally wrecked the thing, and Dean didn't think he could feel any worse, but, turns out, he can.

Actually.

_Actually._

Dean's pulse picks way up and his stomach drops to the heels of his feet and, shit. Shit. Dean surges forward and kisses Cas.

The longest second of his life happens, then, with Cas unmoving above him. All the activity in Dean's brain screeches to a halt so that it can stare and judge the lone self-hating thought that dreamed this up, but then it's a flurry of excitement and confusion because Cas is opening his mouth and kissing back.

Dean gets hard so fast he feels queasy more than aroused, at least until Cas lifts a hand and runs it through his hair.

He groans, then groans again in the bad way because, god, what if this is just some weird Stockholm syndrome thing? What if Cas is only kissing him because Dean launched himself at him?

Except Cas pushes Dean down with his weight so that he's practically smothering him into the dusty floorboards, enthusiasm cranked all the way up to twelve. One of his hands gets trapped under Dean's left shoulder and the other's still fisted in Dean's hair, right behind his ear.

"Wait," Dean says, breaking away. Cas takes that as an invitation to suck at Dean's neck and seriously, how is this his life right now? "Cas, hey. Hold up."

Cas continues sucking. "No." Then he's lapping Dean's pulsepoint with his tongue and Dean forgets everything but that, though the erection trapped in his pants seems to assume the 'oral' part of Cas' actions means it's getting paid attention to next.

Dean thunks his head against the ground and puts his hand on Cas' shoulder, stopping him.

Cas looks annoyed. Cas also looks thoroughly debauched, his lips already turning red and his mouth messy with saliva. "You love me," he says to Dean, like a reminder that's borderline an accusation. "Well, I love you too."

Which is friggin' awesome, but nothing new. Cas tells Dean he loves him like three times a year, mostly during depressing shit, and though Dean's never said it back, it's always been implied. They're family.

The love he feels now, though, that's not family-love. It's not the same thing he feels for Bobby or Sam, that's for damn certain.

Cas' annoyance softens. He still looks pretty frustrated, but this is the kind he blasts Dean with when Dean's not living up to what Cas calls his 'full potential.'

"I said I was scared," Cas reminds him. "Dean, it was this."

Maybe he does have something of a loser complex, because Cas' words only kick up a lot of self-loathing. "Awesome. Hey, nice to know I freak you out."

Still looming over him, Cas does the Cas equivalent of an eye-roll, which is to furrow his brow and stare extra hard. "Don't be stupid."

"So now I'm stupid." Dean gets to his elbows but Cas doesn't back away. "Personal space," he barks, which has been his go-to since he learned what the phrase meant.

Cas uses his grip in Dean's hair to guide him back down.

"Jesus," Dean wheezes, still turned on.

Cas' angry look softens into something more like awe. He drags his hand out of Dean's hair to stroke down one side of Dean's face. The tenderness of it is what makes Dean huff, try to twist his head away.

"I dreamed this," Cas says, stopping him, his voice hitched way low. He's watching his hand, and it's almost like he's in a daydream now.

Hesitantly, Dean brings his own hand up to Cas' face just to see what happens. He curls his fingers and brushes his knuckles down the scratchy part of Cas' jaw. Cas closes his eyes and leans into the touch and, for a moment anyway, Dean isn't scared of losing his best friend.

"Dean, I thought." Cas swallows and opens his eyes again, wide and pleading. "I thought it was just me."

That makes Dean huff out quietly. "Since when do you do anything by yourself?"

Cas freaking nuzzles Dean's palm. "I love you," he says, and it feels sad, it feels like an ending, but they're the best three words Dean's ever heard, he's going to remember this for the rest of his shitty life when Cas is some big shot writer and Dean's mopping floors at fast food joints.

They quit caressing each other like they're acting out the cheesy foreplay parts of a porno and get to the actual porn.

Cas slides on top of Dean, settling so he's sprawled half-across him with their legs tangled together. Their hips catch and then line up, and Dean gets some tangible proof that Cas is as fucked up as he is; his dick is hard and when he rolls his weight forward, it squashes Dean's in the space between them, and Dean pretty much picks up praying on the spot because dear god and all the jesuses, do not let him blow his load early.

Next, they tug off their shirts and throw them aside. Cas pulls back to shuck off his pants and Dean uses the break to do the same, only Cas finishes first so Dean's jeans wind up wrapped around his ankles, but who cares.

Dean's had sex before. Cassie was the first person he ever liked in a non-platonic way, and they'd lost their virginity to each other in her purple-themed twin bed, in the company of a shit load of stuffed animals. There'd been Lisa, who was freaking bendy, and Anna in the backseat of his Impala. He went through a phase after he started realizing his feelings for Cas went beyond friendship where he made out with a lot of different chicks, so, yeah, Dean's got himself some experience in the getting-buck-ass-naked-for-someone-else department.

But Cas doesn't. Dean knows this because he's tried before to get Cas laid, only it's never worked out. One time, with fake IDs, they went to this shady, rundown brothel. Cas had gotten as far as first base before the _lady_ had shrieked and tossed the pair of them out. Dean had asked, later, what that was about, but Cas is taking that secret to his grave, only telling Dean that it was a worthwhile experience and now he knows the things not to do.

There's a psycho at school named Meg who flirts with Cas a lot, but she's shoved her tongue down Dean's throat before _and_ strung Sam along, who's, like, fourteen, so no. So much friggin' no.

Cas shoves a hand between them until he's able to cup Dean's junk through his boxers, which cuts off the air in Dean's throat and reintroduces his wandering mind back to reality. When Cas pushes down roughly with the heel of that hand, Dean's brain switches over to TV static.

"Is that okay?" Cas asks quietly, concerned over Dean's strained, reddening face, but that's just him trying to keep in the sex noises because, yeah, little brother and surrogate father downstairs. He really, really doesn't want this overheard or interrupted.

"Cas," Dean says on a high, breathy laugh. "Blow me." Which is more of an insult than a suggestion, only Cas takes it as both.

He scowls at Dean like Dean's a nasty, foul-mouthed son-of-a-bitch, then snaps, "Fine," like he's agreeing to do Dean's homework for him. Which basically means he's expecting something out of it for him in return, but Dean has no time to process that because Cas slides into the space between Dean's legs, elbowing them so that Dean knows to arrange himself so he's got his socked feet planted on the floor and the knobby knee part up near Cas' shoulders, and then Cas is actually sucking Dean's dick.

Well, first he pulls his boxers down far enough for not-that-little Dean to be fabric free, then he's doing the sucking.

The back of Dean's head hits the floorboards again. "Fuck," he hisses. Cas is going at him like a friggin' pro and Dean can only stare at his ceiling and groan, "Holy shit," over and over again.

He's going to come, and while that's kinda the plan, it's way too soon. Cas is tonguing the precome at the tip of Dean's dick in pretty much the filthiest, most innocent, curious way possible, and how, how does Cas know this stuff, but also, holy god he needs to stop. He really needs to stop because Dean wants to last longer than thirty seconds.

"Cas," he gets out through a throat that's gone dry. "Cas, buddy."

Cas pulls off of Dean's dick with an honest-to-god wet, popping sound. "Is it not good?" he asks, and Dean's dick is bobbing into his damn chin, come on now. Gods of sex, let up some, cut him a freaking break here.

"It's good," he assures him, his voice rough. "Too good. C'mere."

Cas frowns but does as asked, crawling up Dean's body. For a second, the world goes surreal, everything gets dreamlike, and Dean never wants to wake up. Then Cas accidentally knees Dean in the balls and doesn't look too sorry about it, so, yeah, this is definitely real.

Dean laughs. This is real. "Cas," he exhales, so happy it makes him want to do something stupid, like hold hands and go downstairs and let Bobby and Sam see. He wants to get in his car and drive them some place where they'll be the only two people around. Really, he just wants this moment forever, him and Cas.

Cas is smiling too. It's awesome. And Dean is stupidly in love with him.

They grind together there on the floor until they've got a real sloppy rhythm going, and it's the best thing that's ever happened to the downstairs part of Dean's anatomy. It's partially a workout, too, trying to keep still and not scoot all over the floor, but that just means they both get there faster.

Cas' orgasm hits first; he seizes up and groans out noises into Dean's neck, his face buried there.

Like everything else they do, Dean follows him right after.

 

&

 

Dean doesn't have a memory without Cas in it.

That's because the Winchesters became close family friends with the Shurleys as soon as a newly pregnant Mary and her husband John moved in next door to a very pregnant Naomi and her husband Chuck.

The friendship started out slow on the women's side of things, with their different plans to raise their children tempering what was otherwise a polite relationship, but the men were the glue that held the two families together.

Castiel came first, and with him, dinner invitations at John and Mary's so Naomi could get a break off her feet. Dean came along six months later, which meant backyard cookouts and actual playdates.

Some of the first things Dean remembers, Cas is there. The time he tipped back in his chair and scraped the side of his head on the Shurley's potted fern outside their paved patio. He's still got that scar.

He remembers a Christmas when Cas and his mom had come over for turkey and Charlie Brown. The grownups sat around and talked real quiet about why Cas' dad was gone while Dean sat with Cas and showed him how to make the lights on the tree flick on and off.

 

&

 

The next time he sees Cas, it's weird. Only because it's _not_ weird. Dean doesn't know what he was expecting, but Cas plopping onto the couch beside him isn't it.

Then again, Sam's at the table doing homework and Bobby's out front working on cars, so maybe Cas is cool with keeping this between them. Dean had asked if they could, after, when they'd gotten up to wipe themselves off (dried jizz is in Dean's top 3 of 'worst ever,' that is not a joke) and Cas had looked bothered at the time but clearly he's gotten over it.

Doesn't mean that Dean's not hyper-aware Cas is sitting closer than he usually sits. He endures it through a commercial break, then five minutes of a TV show he's only half paying attention to before he remembers they now have the kind of relationship that includes voluntarily rutting against each other until they both get off. What the hell are they still doing downstairs?

Dean clicks the TV off and says, "Wanna hang out?" in an edited version of his bedroom-voice. He's definitely horny now, but Sam's still right there.

Cas narrows his eyes at Dean. "We are."

It takes so much effort to not waggle his eyebrows. "Upstairs."

Cas gets squintier. Dean can't tell if Cas has caught on and is just fucking with him, or if he's genuinely this clueless. Either way, he swipes the remote from Dean -- their fingers graze, and it's the most contact they've had with each other in days, and maybe it makes Dean the chick in the relationship but he swears it sends his pulse skittering -- and puts the TV back on, which might as well be a bucket of cold rejection. Dean, however, is resilient.

He snatches the remote back and turns the TV off before protests can be made, then hauls Cas up and off the couch with him.

"You're so bossy sometimes, jeez," Sam says, eyeballing him hard. That's because Sam has started to hero worship Cas, hoping to leech off Dean's BFFship with him in order to fuse their nerd minds together, just so him and Cas can dork out over the same dumb comics and braid each other's hair. Dean loves the kid, and he gets it, Cas is awesome, but right now he doesn't want to share.

"You're acting strangely," Cas tells him, but he doesn't fight being pulled upstairs.

They stumble over a pair of sneakers left on the steps, and then that fourth one from the top because it's busted and Dean always forgets, but as soon as they reach the landing Dean smiles real triumphantly and lets go of Cas. Who just stands there and stares at Dean with a mixture of worry, confusion, and mild indignation.

Then Dean smirks and the filthy parts of Cas' brain switch on.

He honest-to-god blushes and says, "Oh," like this is the first time it's crossed his mind they might bad-touch each other again.

That doesn't exactly rally Dean's confidence. It does the opposite for him, actually. He feels his smirk drop but he turns and heads for his room before Cas can see.

He pauses in the doorway for Cas to follow him in, and Cas does, right on his heels. The second the door shuts, though, Cas is shoving him right back into it. Dean manages to turn so it's his back that lands against the wood, but he still hits it so hard and so solidly there's a loud, bodily thud to chase the slamming noise. Dean winces and waits to hear for Sam stomping up the stairs to investigate the sound, but Cas pushes into Dean and Dean stops caring about anything else.

"Hey," he says, only because one syllable words are about all he can manage right now. Cas is caging him in, they're pressed together in all the important places, and somehow he forgot until just now how badly Cas does it for him.

Cas, FYI, hit puberty a full eight months before Dean, and though he's since developed a deep, manly voice of his own, Cas has been sounding like he garbles glass since he was fourteen. Somehow, Cas sounds throatier than usual now, as low and gravelly as Dean's ever heard him. When he says, " _Dean_ ," it's like a warning, like this shit is going down, speak now or forever hold your peace.

If it's a scare tactic, it ain't working.

Dean slides his hands up Cas' face until he's cradling his jaw. "Shut up." Then he's pulling Cas those last few inches, kissing him deep and dirty just like he's been wanting to do.

Cas is hard already, Dean can feel him against his hip. Probably Cas can feel him, too, his hands tugging at Dean's waist so they're pressed as tight and close as possible. Cas' hips stutter forward that first time they line up just right, and it knocks Dean back into the door for another noisy thump.

They need to not be at the door.

Without breaking their kiss, Dean reaches blindly for the doorknob. It takes him a few swipes but eventually he finds it and locks it. Then he pushes off and gets them headed for his bed, both his hands wrapped around Cas' face again.

Cas' hands are on the move too; they sweep up Dean's back, fingers fisting in the fabric along the way, dragging Dean's shirt far enough up that he feels a cool tickle of air. Goosebumps follow. When the backs of Cas' knees hit the bed, his grip tightens and he takes Dean down with him.

Dean lands on top with an oomph, about as graceful as a sack of potatoes. It's jarring, but he's still straddling Cas, whose legs hang loosely off the edge, so what does he care.

Breaking their kiss, he sits up and barely even notices Cas trying to follow after him because holy actual christ, that's Cas' very hard dick nudged between his ass. His jeans-covered ass, but still.

"Dean," Cas says, in the throes of hormonal lust. His eyes have gone like three shades darker and he sounds like the operator of one of those 1-900 sex phone lines. Naturally it zaps a good portion of Dean's remaining brain cells, reducing him to the very neanderthal urges of 'want' and 'now.'

Dean lifts so he's on his hands and knees, the shift in weight making both the mattress dip and him sink closer. He hooks a couple fingers around the tie Cas is wearing and tugs.

"Move."

Cas catches on quick and, reverse-army crawl style, scoots out from beneath Dean to drag himself higher up the bed. As he goes, the tie slides out of Dean's fingers, and Dean, this one time only, says a silent 'thank you' to Cas's mom for making him wear what he long ago dubbed Cas's 'holy tax accountant' look on Sundays. Because as soon as Dean settles back on top of him, his ass sitting pretty just below Cas' obvious and tented bulge, he grabs the silk fabric again.

Cas is breathing out heavily, but, hell, so is Dean. He loops the tie around his hand and _pulls_.

Even though Cas seems super into it too, it's creating a weird power dynamic Dean is in no way fit to emotionally handle. Dean trusts the fuck out of Cas, that's as obvious as saying grass is green, and he knows it goes both ways, but there's something about seeing that trust turn into a solid thing between them that he's not ready for.

And fun as it might be to think of ways to mess around, tie included, right now Dean just wants them both stripped as close to naked as they can get before Sam or Bobby comes knocking, so he closes the distance himself, pressing Cas back onto the bed with a kiss that turns frantic fast. He lets the tie go.

 

&

 

They've got three months of summer before Cas starts his freshman year at Dartmouth University, which is something stupid like 1500 miles away. Not that Dean's Google mapped it or anything.

"We should go somewhere," Dean decides one day. He's playing video games and Cas, sprawled on Dean's bed where Dean is sitting, has his nose in a book. Cas also has his hand resting lightly against Dean's knee like he craves the contact.

"Where?"

Dean chucks the controller to the end of his bed. "Anywhere."

That's what starts the roadtrips.

They never last more than a few hours, and most times they don't actually go anywhere, but Dean is more than happy to waste the gas money because it means cruising the highways with his baby and his best friend.

Cas likes the diners they eat at. The kind where you get a booth in the back and the music from a jukebox loops overhead. Padded seatings and sticky table tops. Burgers, fries, pie, and all the clogged arteries a guy could want.

Tourist trap gas stations, too, are another thing Cas geeks out over. Dean's glove compartment is slowly being turned into Cas' hoarding grounds, stuffed with the crap he buys each trip. South Dakota postcards, one from Iowa when they got adventurous and left the state. There are two miniature license plates that say 'Dan' and 'Chad,' the closest they've come to finding ones with their own names. There are also diner receipts and a few swiped menus, brochures to places Cas wants to travel, a couple of paperbacks for reading.

The farther into summer it gets, the longer their trips become.

Currently they're on an endlessly straight stretch of road, no other car in front, behind, or beside them. It's been like that for a while now, and Dean keeps their speed kicked up a good fifteen miles over the limit.

With the window rolled down, the wind flopping his hair around, Cas leans against his side of the car, all his concentration on _1984_. Dean doesn't get how Cas can read it as often as he does, but he likes the familiarity and routine of it enough to keep quiet about it.

It's only barely after two and the sun is high in the sky. South Dakota summers usually mean afternoon thunderstorms, but so far there ain't a single dark cloud. It's hot, even with the window down, and Dean loves his baby like most people love their family members, but his ass is burning up on top of her dark leather seats. He's got beads of sweat along his temple too, and when he looks over at Cas, he sees Cas' bangs are a wet mess against his forehead.

Dean notices a turnoff just up ahead into a little blip on the map called Beresford, so he takes it.

Cas pulls himself out of the book to watch as they drift from highway to town. Calling it that, though, is being generous. There are a couple of gas stations, some fast food restaurants, and a cheap, rundown-looking motel with a broken 'vacancy' sign.

Dean brakes at the lone stop light and waits for it to switch to green, still the only car on the street.

"Hungry?" he asks Cas.

"Where are we?"

"Armpit of South Dakota, from the looks of it. Sign said Beresford."

The light turns and Dean makes a left.

They drive past a Biggersons and a Taco Bell before Cas sits up straight, which is Dean's cue they're coming up on something he likes. Sure enough, there's a diner, and it's in the shape of a freaking aluminum motor home. Dean snorts at Cas' predictability but he's already got his blinker on, pulling into the mostly empty parking lot.

Inside, they opt for a booth instead of the counter, though Cas seems seriously torn for a solid minute there. When they take a seat, Cas does the usual thing of sitting beside Dean so closely, they might as well be a pair of them freaky conjoined twins.

From across the diner, one of the waitresses notices and sends Dean a smile that so blatantly says 'aww, aren't you two the cutest homos around,' it's pure instinct for him to elbow Cas and gripe, "Other side, man."

Cas doesn't make a big deal about getting up and sitting opposite him, but there's a little bit of tension now where before they were both sharing the same mellow mood.

The waitress comes over, still wearing that annoying ass smile that lets Dean know she's got her eyes on him. Cas, for some reason, gets a softer, kinder version when she takes out her pen and notepad. "What can I start you guys off with?"

"Coffee, if you have it," Cas says, flipping over the paper menu they'd been given. "Please."

"You know, I _think_ we have a pot brewing around here somewhere," she tells him. There's a slight teasing lilt to her voice. It's a diner. No shit they have coffee. Her gaze lands on Dean, then, and she lifts the corners of her smile back up. "What about you?"

She's cute, Dean decides. A few years older, sure, and not his usual type, but once Cas is gone to college, he figures things like 'taste' and 'compatibility' won't matter so much. Voids to be filled, and all that jazz. Besides, he likes her hair. It's like a fire truck and a pumpkin got into a brawl and the blood spill wound up on her head. And, as if that wasn't enough to grab his attention and keep it, she's got a Star Trek pin clipped in place beside her name tag.

Charm comes natural to him, and he uses it now like it's going out of style later. "I don't know. Charlie, is it? See, me and my buddy here were just driving through, figured we'd stop, grab ourselves a bite. What do they drink in Beresford?"

She laughs, seeing right through him. But still, she leans forward and plays along. "Guy like you? Coca Cola's pretty popular all over. There's a cult. I'm joking, there's not a cult. So, wait." Her snark cuts off abruptly and she studies them anew. "Where're you coming in from?"

Cas, who's seen Dean flirt with -- and get flirted by -- many'a girl throughout their years, catches on that that's what's happening now, his attention being drawn from the menu to watch, and obviously Dean feels like a dick about it. Him and Cas haven't put words to what's going on between them, and while he wouldn't call it dating, it's clearly something. But, he's 18. He loves the fuck out of Cas, but this, he knows, is temporary. And besides, he's not gay. It's Cas he likes. Just Cas.

Dean ups his smirk a couple notches so it more resembles a leer. "Anywhere you'd like," he drawls. It makes Cas cough out a noise of secondhand embarrassment, which has Dean wavering in his flirtation a little. Still, he keeps eye contact with her, even as she pulls back and stuffs her pen into the hair behind her ear.

"Vague and serial killer-y. Not creepy at all. I'll get you those drinks."

With a glance that lingers, she swishes her hair over her shoulder and heads for the kitchen, looking back only once to find Dean still staring. That makes her laugh, and her laugh makes Dean feel that thrill of victory sweep through him like a full-body adrenaline rush.

"You're not exactly subtle, you know," Cas says in his usual dry rumble, reminding Dean that he's not alone and, oh yeah, that he's an asshole. It doesn't make him feel any better about himself, but his brain can't help but supply the fact that, even if him and Cas mutually get each other off, never mind his feelings for the guy, no one said this thing was exclusive.

Dean shrugs, picking at the ruined papery edges of a coaster already on the table in front of him. He smiles at Cas something that's flashy and boastful but all show. "Yeah, well, subtle doesn't get you what you want."

Cas' eyes drop back down to his menu. He stands it open and upright on the table, so it's partially shielding him, this makeshift tower or shelter or whatever Cas is going for. There's a heavy, dragged out beat, and then Cas asks, still not looking at him, "Do you? Want her?"

Dean, again, feels warring emotions, because fuck no, what he wants is Cas. Preferably for forever, but as long as possible works too. But it's not possible, and that already sucks enough as it is. If he's going to wind up alone anyway, why not spare them both the inevitable heartache and pull that band-aid off now?

The waitress returns before Dean can answer. She slides Cas his coffee and, very pointedly, sets down Dean's glass of soda in front of him. "For the out-of-towner," she teases, "something we here like to call, 'coke.'" She's messing with him, but she's into him too, Dean can tell. "Now, how about a meal? Or did you two need more time? I can come back."

Dean looks at Cas -- he's already looking at Dean -- and ignores the curl of guilt that winds up sloshing around his insides. "Just a burger and fries for me."

"So you _have_ heard of those before. I wasn't sure. Town secret," she whispers behind her palm, eyebrows darting towards the kitchen.

"Me too," Cas says, snatching his menu up.

"With cheese," Dean adds, since that's their usual order. It gets him looks from both Cas and the waitress, who's gone back to giving him that knowing grin. He gets defensive right away. "What? Cas likes cheese."

"Uh huh," she drawls, pretty much rubbing Dean's awkwardness in his face. She grabs Cas' menu from him and the one Dean never bothered to open. "So, Cas. That's a pretty sweet name. Dreamy, too."

She was attractive when she was aiming her flirty eyes Dean's way. Yeah, he doesn't like it so much when that stare is on Cas.

"Yeah, if you've got a thing for angels, maybe," Dean says under his breath, snarky about it.

Her eyebrows shoot straight to her hairline. "Angel, huh?"

It takes Dean a second, but then he catches on. His face is practically flaming at the implication. "His name, it's Castiel. Friggin' angel of Thursday, and cheeseburgers, or whatever."

"Right, well, Cas." That is said so, so purposefully. "I'll be back with your burgers."

Dean's mood does a 180 once she's left them. Before, there was hope, and in it, denial, but now that's gone. Cas isn't doing a damn thing to hide his enjoyment of Dean crashing and burning, either.

"Still so subtle," he tells Dean, picking up Dean's straw and peeling the wrapper off for him.

"You know what," Dean starts, snatching the straw back. "Shut up."

 

&

 

Later, when they're parked in what might as well be the location of an opening scene to any number of generic horror movies -- it's a gravel parking lot at the edge of a forest-lined lake, and they are the only people around at a time TV tells him is called 'dusk' -- Cas is wedged up against Dean in the front seat, so close he is forcing the tops of Dean's thighs into the steering wheel. That rush of want and need and lust is back, only more somehow; bigger.

Dean has always prided himself on his sexual prowess, but, turns out, Cas is the perv. It was him, anyway, that initiated the front seat groping, which is so freaking cliche of them, and Dean would feel more embarrassed about that if Cas wasn't wriggling his fingers down the front of Dean's pants, finding his hardening dick and jerking him off just as soon as he touches it.

Dean hisses into the kiss Cas isn't giving him any space to break away from, rolling his hips clear off the seat. It's a deep, hungry, purely primal instinct, him chasing after friction like that. Cas just pulls his elbow back and adjusts to the new angle.

Not to expose his every depraved fantasy, but when Dean's doing this himself, thinking of some Busty Asian Beauties spread or, as is often the case as of late, Cas, he goes at it hard. Not enough to chafe, but a little pain with his pleasure always seems to drag him towards the edge a lot faster, and somewhere between the first time they did this and now, Cas has picked up on that.

Which means he doesn't bother unzipping Dean, limiting all those fine motor skills that make for a truly fantastic handjob. It's more like he's rubbing Dean's dick like he's working a batch of dough he's got a weird vendetta against, not so much pumping it as he is teasing, and something about that has Dean tipping his head back until he feels leather behind him.

They're not saying anything either, except for Cas' name that Dean keeps groaning like some cheap porn star, but it still feels super charged between them.

Finally Cas ends their kiss, palming Dean like Dean's got thirty seconds to get off or the world's going to shit. There's a swoop in his stomach. He can feel his arousal building.

Cas says, "Dean," thickly, stopping, with his hand still down Dean's pants, just long enough to unzip himself. Then he's getting to his knees, arranging himself so he's masturbating over Dean's splayed thigh while he starts working on Dean again and, holy christ, men with stronger willpower have been done in by less.

"Yeah," he hears himself say, and it's like he's drugged, the way his mouth forms the words but he doesn't fully register them until a few seconds later. Everything feels foggy, delayed.

Cas tightens his jaw, huffing out quick breaths through his nose. "You should show me some respect."

It is, single handedly, the hottest thing to ever happen to Dean, and he's browsed some truly fucked up internet porn. The sound alone is going to kill him; Cas must have a pretty slicked up grip on himself, because the wet drag is filling up the whole damn car.

"Cas," he breathes out.

Dean thrusts weakly, his dick smearing precome against Cas' palm, and he fucks into that, into the loose, sweaty fist Cas wraps around him, his eyes lasered in on what Cas is doing to himself like he's some neighborhood creep but, jesus, he can't help it. You couldn't pay him to stop looking right now, not with the way Cas is into it. The thing that's getting to him the most is that Cas is clearly trying to make a point here. It's not that Dean's being a submissive bitch, it's that Cas is being possessive as hell.

Somehow, by some serious well of restraint he never knew he even had, Dean manages to hold off until Cas has completely lost his rhythm, until he's breathing fast and heavy and chanting Dean's name like he's cursing, or begging, or, you know, both. But the second Cas cuts off all noises except a low, choked out groan and he pitches forward, Dean goes right along with him.

Cas comes in spurts that hit Dean in the chest, his neck, one on his chin when Cas' hips jerk forward, and Dean opens his mouth -- not to catch any (though, _fuck_ ) but because he's panting that hard, because he's that turned on. Ass dropping back to the seat, he rocks forward in small, tight thrusts; his orgasm hits him like it's being chased out, and it has the world blurring and brightening and muting all around him.

When he comes back to, his boxers are sticky and so is Cas' hand where he's still lightly rolling the heel of his palm into parts of Dean that are way too sensitive for that. Dean makes a face that is part post-boning bliss and part-grimace, grabbing Cas' wrist to stop him.

Cas gets the hint. He slips his hand out of Dean's pants, leaning forward and dropping a kiss on Dean's mouth to distract them both from the jizz he's wiping off on Dean's shirt. Awesome. Dean barely even cares though. There is come trickling down his thigh, itchy from his wet boxers, and that's something he cares a little more about, but not enough to put an end to the lazy way Cas is kissing him.

Eventually it's too uncomfortable to ignore, and that's when Cas zips himself back up and slides to his side of the car. He pulls on his seatbelt while Dean rifles through the glove compartment for a napkin. Not that the one he finds will even do anything. The stains on his shirt are already dry, and the less said about the situation in his pants, the better.

The Impala starts up with a growl, twin headlights splitting the darkness in two. Right away, Foreigner spills out of the speakers, this low hum of, 'Feels like the first time. Like we've opened up the door. Feels like the first time. Like it never will again, never again.'

Dean turns it up and drives them home.

 

&

 

When Dean was a kid -- we're talking six or seven here -- his favorite story to tell was the one about his house burning down.

The teachers called it a coping mechanism, encouraging his catharsis through any means necessary, insanely morbid or not, but Dean learned early on he liked the attention. More than that, he liked recreating reality. In the stories, his mom didn't have to die and four-year-old him sure as hell never carried six-month-old Sammy over to Cas'. Naomi didn't hug him and hold him while the lights of fire trucks shone through the front windows, they didn't have to move two days later, and forget about a funeral. Never happened.

Except it did, and something about the trauma of it all, or maybe just residing next to a constant reminder, made Naomi reach out. Dean and Sam, when they weren't at their dad's friend Missouri's, spent a lot of their formative years under the Shurley's care. Thank god for childhood repression, because all Dean really remembers from that time is trying to follow all of Naomi's rules and missing his dad.

Then the Shurley's moved, and it just so happened they bought themselves a patch of land all the way in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, adjacent to the patch of land owned by John Winchester's old army buddy, Bobby Singer.

Dean and Sam got themselves a new, more permanent place to live, and Cas stayed the boy next door.

 

&

 

Dean's being chased down by a giant robot.

In his dream, anyway, and it's bad ass. The robot is as tall as one of them baby skyscrapers, built just as rectangular but with screws and metal plates. It taunts him in a series of bleeps and bloops before pelting rocks at him. Big as softballs, they land nearby with audible pings. Something else calls out his name.

And then a loud thud startles Dean awake.

"Dean," he hears, this shouted hiss. Then another ping.

Rocks, he realizes, at his window. Cas. Cas is throwing --

With a grunt, Dean rolls out of bed and pushes the curtain back. Cas is only a black-and-white shadowy blur down below, but he'd recognize his friend anywhere.

He tugs the window open, hit immediately with a blast of hot, humid air.

"Come down?" Cas whispers up at him; Sam's room is beside Dean's.

He doesn't even have to think about it. "One sec," he whispers back.

It's actually more like a couple hundred seconds later, but after Dean pulls on his pants he'd left earlier on the floor, shrugs into a hoodie, and creeps his way downstairs careful to not alert the yapping watch dog that is his tattletale little brother, he meets Cas where he's waiting for him out in the middle of the salvage yard.

Cas is leaning against this old, partially rusted Nova that was once painted a bright yellow but has long since faded to the color of dried out, trampled weeds with his head tipped back to look at the stars. He doesn't stop staring either when Dean joins him by slipping onto the hood of the car; it gives a little, rocking down with the newly added weight.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean snorts, his eyebrows drawing up wryly. "Cas," he greets right back, but his inflection dips, loaded as it is with sarcasm. Cas Romeo-and-Juliet'd him out of his freaking bedroom at ass-o'clock in the morning, and now they're just gonna sit here like that's normal? Well, okay.

Dean leans onto his hands behind him, tilting his head until stars come into view. It's a pretty clear night, but because they're still smack dab in the middle of a fairly populated town, the sky is more inky black nothingness than faraway celestial explosions. Still freaking neat to look at, though.

Eventually Cas hoists himself onto the hood as well, making the car swoop down again. He scoots until he's reclined against the windshield. After a second, Dean follows.

For a while, except for the constant chirping of crickets and the occasional overhead drone of an airplane, it's quiet. Stiflingly so, and Dean's not normally one for drawn out, melodramatic moments of silent self-reflection, but there's something about Cas right now that's making Dean wait it out. Whatever this even is.

"Chuck called," is what finally comes out, and never, not in a million years, would Dean have guessed it. Cas' dad bailed so long ago, some part of Dean's brain stopped thinking of him as real. The bastard hasn't so much as sent Cas a birthday card in the past 5 years. He pretty much vanished.

It's selfish as hell but Dean's brain skips straight to his own daddy issues. It's been half as long since him or Sam have had more than a 10-minute phone call with their own dad, but at least they hear from him, even if he's usually only ringing them up like they're some kind of tri-monthly obligation he belatedly remembers about. The asshole.

Who cares about that now, though.

Dean glances over at Cas. "Dick," he bites out accusingly, and it's heated from how badly he means it. Then, "You talk to him at all?" Because if he knows Cas as well as he's sure he does, there's no way that call went missed.

"I listened," Cas answers, vague. "He talked."

"Dude."

"Yes."

"What an asshat."

"I had the same conclusion."

Dean flips to his side. Even with the weight of his gaze on him, Cas doesn't surrender his staring contest with the sky.

The last time they talked about Chuck they were twelve and Dean had thought the best way to cheer Cas up, the only way, was to repress any and all emotions and talk about Star Trek instead. As real men do. He weighs a similar urge now, only his new method of distraction has since evolved to involve the removing of clothing rather than the detailed ranking of best/worst episodes, but one long look at Cas tells Dean this is something Cas needs to vent about. Or, at the very least, not be encouraged to burrow way down like Dean tends to do.

He shoves him good-naturedly on the shoulder so that Cas finally meets his gaze. "And? What'd he say?"

For a long time, Cas doesn't answer. He just stares back, looking lost. Broken.

"Cas?"

"How do you manage it?" he asks finally.

Dean pushes out a weak laugh to cover the fact that he hasn't managed to handle a friggin' thing here. There's nights he sits up still waiting to hear his dad walk through the door, and how fucked up is that?

"Denial, mostly," he grounds out, light. "Booze helps." Bobby and Sam, too. And, of course, there's -- "You," he admits, eyes locked on Cas', voice loose again but for a whole different reason.

Cas' face goes completely wrecked for a second. And then he closes his eyes and breathes out heavily. Dean's heart does a couple of drunken somersaults in his chest. But Cas just opens his eyes without making a big deal out of it and stares at the stars again, only there's a new sort of calm to him.

"I'd like to just... sit here quietly," he murmurs, after.

So that's what they do.

 

&

 

"Dude. What the hell is this?" Dean asks Cas, but it's more like an accusation of terrible taste because the 'this' in question is an audible assault similar to the torment Sam tends to put him through.

They're out driving and Cas has the radio switched over to some godawful Top 40's rap song.

Cas shrugs loosely enough that he isn't fooling anyone. "What?" he has the balls to say, without even a smidge of the shame he should be feeling. "I like it."

Dean doesn't stare at the road for a solid 30 seconds.

Instead he gapes at Cas, waiting for his brain to translate that into something that makes any kind of sense. Never actually happens, though, and Cas seems content to silently battle it out, his blank stare locked unflinchingly with Dean's.

Surrender comes pretty damn quick.

Grumbling under his breath, Dean rolls his shoulders out to loosen up the knotted muscles of his back and turns again to face the road, all without vocalizing his baby's first and most stubbornly enforced rule, which is: 'driver picks the music; shotgun shuts his cakehole.'

Cas shifts and stares out his side of the car with an obvious air of victory and self-satisfaction.

A couple seconds later, his hand reaches between them and curls around Dean's.

 

&

 

"So. Here."

From where he had it stashed under his bed, Dean pushes a brown paper sack into Cas' hands.

Cas, previously occupied with flipping through reruns on Dean's TV, merely stares at it a few beats too long before he realizes he's supposed to take it.

Dean scratches the back of his neck when he does, embarrassed, even though, honestly, it's nothing, it's just a couple of blank --

"Cassette tapes?" Cas reads the plastic packaging, frowning. He lifts that confusion up to Dean.

Clearing his throat, Dean tries to shut down the noise in his head alerting him he's a giant sap. "Yeah, you know. For our roadtrips. Or whatever." It's a pretty big concession, giving over control of the radio like that, considering his car's well-established cardinal rule and all. Sam would shit literal exclamation points if he ever found out.

"Dean," Cas starts.

To stop the mushy, knowing grin that spreads across Cas' entire face, Dean scowls and points at him.

"No boybands," he warns, if only to save his last remaining shred of dignity.

 

&

 

By the time the 4th of July rolls around, Dean's just glad for a break in the monotony.

Not that he isn't enjoying spending most of his every waking hour with Cas, especially with the things -- and, um, body parts -- they inevitably get up to, but there's nothing that drives Dean up a wall faster than stagnancy and repetition. Save maybe Sam's gassy response to burritos.

Five minutes to eleven, though, and Dean's still in bed, buried under a mound of covers. He woke up with morning wood, predictably so, and has spent the better half of the past ten minutes lightly massaging himself, still drowsy and lazy from sleep and not in any rush.

There's a spark, this tingling jolt of pleasure, that shoots off in his gut whenever he rolls his hand over the head of his dick and slides it, slowly, all the way back down. He keeps his eyes closed, forcing his brain to stay in Dreamland where Cas is naked and giving him a blowjob. In this scenario, Dean's also being rubbed down by barely clothed women he's pretty sure his psyche is projecting from Busty Asian Beauties spreads, because Dreamland Dean is nothing if not opportunistic.

Soon he's rolled over, pressing his hips into the mattress. There's, like, zero friction happening, but in his brain Cas is making out with one of those busty beauties and even though it sends a possessive flare coursing angrily through him, something else chases that feeling, something darker, dirtier. Wrong. But, god, so right, and Dean's pretty sure he can come from this alone, from humping his friggin' bedsheets.

Distantly he hears the telltale thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk of someone rushing up the stairs, but it takes his bedroom door bursting open for things to register. Awareness hits pretty damn fast after that.

Dean scrambles for a pillow and curses out loud, ready to combust from embarrassment, but it's just Cas.

Who is breathing slightly more rapid than normal, and while Dean would like to think he has something to do with that, logic's patting his head condescendingly and reminding him Cas likely took those stairs two at a time.

Still, Cas' eyes scan the length of Dean's body, and Dean knows the reason for their sudden darkness is 100% him. Cas' voice, when he speaks, is as much blatant desire as it is genuine curiosity. "What were you... doing, Dean?" he asks him.

Well, right now he's clutching a pillow to his confused dick, actually. Thanks very much. Dean rolls over to his back, losing the pillow along the way, and rakes his hands through his hair. "Close the damn door," he sighs.

Cas does. The door clicks shut and then it clicks again when Cas locks it. And Dean's dick, which had started out hard before disappearing considerably at the interruption, is once again perking with interest, roused by all the attention.

Dean sticks his hand under the sheet and squeezes.

Cas stares, swallowing.

Then he takes a step forward.

"Hey, Cas!" Sam shouts, clomping his way upstairs. Three seconds later, the doorknob twists and Sam thumps heavily against the door. "Dean? Cas?"

Locked, the doorknob merely rattles some more while Sam keeps banging himself against the door that's obviously not opening.

How things have turned from a guaranteed very happy morning for him to actualized cockblocking, Dean will never know, but it's enough to make him grumpy. "Go away!" he yells.

Cas turns to let Sam in, sucker for the kid's whinings that he is. Dean lifts his head to scowl at him, gesturing emphatically at his naked state of being.

"Dude, don't."

Sam's voice comes in louder this time, like he's pressed right up against the door. He's probably trying to peek through the cracks, the freak. "Is Cas in there? Cas! It's me!" The doorknob shakes more vigorously.

"Jesus christ," Dean swears under his breath, dragging himself into a sitting position. Sam's presence has officially killed his boner dead, but Cas still gives him a super loaded once over, his eyes lingering on Dean's bare chest and crotch area before he gets a hold of himself.

"Perhaps we should..."

"Yeah," Dean sighs again, "let him in."

As soon as Cas unlocks the door, Sam stumbles in. Right away he eyes the room suspiciously, like whatever reason there was for him being locked out, it's tangible and probably lying around somewhere.

"What do you want, pipsqueak?"

Sam gives up the search to eye Dean with giant, glossy, cartoon eyes. For whatever reason, he's stoked. "It's Wednesday."

Dean makes his face say: so?

"You said we'd get fireworks today. Remember?"

He doesn't until he meets Cas' gaze, and the look Cas gives him paints an instant picture in his brain: they'd been making out upstairs, as per usual, and to stop Sam from constantly skulking outside his room whining about how bored he was and couldn't they go out and do something cool, Dean had promised him he'd take him to get fireworks if he'd shut up and leave them alone for ten damn minutes.

Two days later and Sam's looking to cash in.

"Yeah," Dean blows out. "Alright."

Sam's pretty much beaming rainbows at him. "Really?"

"I said so, didn't I?" And Dean keeps his promises.

"Cas is coming too, right, Cas?"

Cas' smile is small and gentle and just this side of affectionate. "Of course. Though, maybe it'd be best to give Dean another few minutes to wake up first." The conspiratorial look they exchange seems to suggest Dean's some sort of cranky riser, but, please, compared to Cas? Dean's a frickin' peach.

Sam stifles a grin and says, "Okay, cool. I'll go tell Bobby we're going. I'm so excited!" And then, like the overzealous freak that he is, he bounds downstairs like some mobile embodiment of pure joy.

Cas shuts the door after him. When he locks it, Dean's eyebrows go sky high.

"We were promised time," Cas says by way of explanation.

He pounces.

It takes Dean less than four minutes to come.

 

&

 

Hours after, when the sun has started to set, the three of them find themselves in the overgrown field behind the long ago abandoned 7-Eleven.

There's a patch just past the parking lot out back that's all gravel and hard dirt and very little weeds, which makes it their perfect launching spot.

They have to be careful; even though this place is tucked into the corner of town people have no reason to loiter at, there are guys out there, guys like Alastair and Crowley, who might show up just to piss everyone off.

Sam's still bubbling with excitement, moreso now that Dean's setting everything up and there's a whole open field for him to expend his energy in. He alternates between watching Dean arrange the fireworks and exploring the knee-high wilds that make up this stretch of grass.

"Hey, careful out there!" Dean calls after him when Sam kneels and starts poking at something with a stick. "You get hurt, I'm gonna kill you myself."

Cas' scuffed up shoes slide into view when he steps opposite from where Dean's crouched. Dean doesn't look up, too busy making sure he doesn't put any of the small ass explosives next to the big ass explosives. Bobby'd murder them if they blew the place up.

"Sam seems happy," Cas comments conversationally.

The mention of his brother makes it automatic for Dean to sneak a glance that way. Sam's dragging his stick through the grass now, stopping every time it snags on a tangle. Dean snorts, looking down again. "Kid's a friggin' puppy, I swear."

"In any case, you're a good brother, Dean."

Dean snorts again, embarrassed for no good reason, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He finds the lighter he'd placed near their stash and gives it an experimental swipe. A small flame erupts, making everything glow suddenly. Sam notices the yellow, orange-ish flicker and hollers his excitement, which makes Dean chuckle before he extinguishes it.

"Okay," Dean says, his eyes rising finally to meet Cas'. They flare teasingly and he warns, "You might want to stay back, it's about to get hot."

Cas backs off until him and Sam have met a good, solid thirty feet from where Dean's dropping so that the meat of his knees touch gravel. He leans forward, lighting a fuse, then jolts back up to his feet, expecting one hell of a show, but it winds up being a crummy fountain.

The thing lights up impressively for a grand total of six seconds, spitting out different colored sparks that are as tall as Dean is, but all too soon it sputters then dies.

Cas claps sarcastically while Sam laughs.

"Can it," Dean mutters, but he's smiling too. That was such a shitty light show, jesus christ.

The next few are similarly disappointing. Go figure, but shopping for fireworks on the actual holiday means you get the weak spread.

Dean barely cares though because, overcompensating sparklers or not, Sam's cheering and shouting and having a blast and it makes Dean feel like a goddamn king.

The roman candles are a much bigger hit.

Dean, like a good little boy scout, squats back down and plants the first one in a mound of dirt before lighting it. He backs off just as it starts to scream and send a spray of projectile colored-fire through the air.

It gets the loudest reaction out of Sam yet. Even Cas, when Dean looks over at him, is into it, his face tipped towards the sky.

By the time they've worked through the individual stuff, it's pitch black outside, save for the dimmed glow of the gas station street light on the other side of the building that casts most of the field in a faint yellow light. Sam and Cas are dark shadows that Dean hears more than sees, their whispers drifting his way like a breeze.

He lights the final cake's single fuse, the big kahuna with all the fancy aerial shit that people go gaga for, and bolts backward before it blows. Weeds thwack at his legs, the night air a hypnotic rush around him, until he's at his brother and Cas' side.

The first firework peels off into the sky while Dean's coming down from the slight jog, still breathing hard to catch his breath. He should be watching, but instead he stares at Cas. And Cas, whose whole face all of a sudden lights up pink from the tiny explosion in the sky, is staring back.

Six more go off that way. Sam shouts and throws his hands in the air, leaping circles around Dean, his whole world, for this one moment anyway, as close to perfect as one kid's can get.

And Dean, with his eyes locked on Cas and Cas' locked right back on his, both of them numb to everything else, knows the feeling exactly.

 

&

 

"So, is Cas your _boyfriend_ now?" Sam asks from the kitchen table. The way his voice dips as he says it, he thinks he's being funny, like he might as well be asking if Dean bangs animals.

Even so, Dean flushes, guilt creeping its way up his neck. Bobby's working late in the garage which means it's up to him to throw together spaghetti for dinner. "Don't be dumb."

"You're dumb," Sam zings back on a bratty exhale.

"Not as dumb as your face."

Sam mutters darkly under his breath. Dean's counting that as a win. For a while, he stirs the pasta and Sam kicks at the table legs, making a constant metallic thump-thump-thump rattle through the kitchen from the silverware that clatter on top.

Then Sam says, "Cas is so cool," in the exact same voice Dean uses to describe pie.

Dean snorts. "No boners at the table."

"Dean!" Dean looks behind him to see Sam's face is flaming in embarrassment. "Gross!"

Dean smiles as big as he can make it. "What?"

"You're the one who likes him so much, anyway. I know you do, so you don't have to be such a jerk about it. I'm not gonna tell."

"Sam, shut up."

"You know, Mr. Uriel at school says when two guys like each other, it's an abomination--"

"For real, I will hit you."

"He's not as nice as Mr. Balthazar. Mr. Balthazar teaches world history, but he's always talking about orgies--"

Dean turns away from the stove with a glare. "Yeah, I don't care. Supper's almost ready."

Sam just shrugs and keeps kicking at the table. He's been going through a defiant phase where he doesn't want to listen to Dean because apparently Dean tries 'way too hard to be just like dad,' but sometimes, like now, he resembles the same goofy-haired weirdo he's always been and even though he's a pain in the ass, it makes Dean happy.

"If Cas isn't your boyfriend, why is he over _all_ the time?" Sam tries one last time, like Cas hasn't been glued to their sides since day freaking one.

Dean's chest tingles with warmth, and something bigger.

"He's Cas."

And that's reason enough.

 

&

 

The only time they've ever talked about life post-high school was when Cas broke the news he'd gotten into Dartmouth. Dean reacted to that like he reacts to any kind of change; he left, got off-his-ass drunk, and didn't talk to Cas for four days. You know, normal stuff. Healthy stuff.

So when they're lying on Dean's bed one Tuesday afternoon, doing something Dean would only ever admit to as 'cuddling' under strict torture, and Cas says, "Come with me," all his familiar fight-or-flight instincts kick in. It's only because Cas sounds like he's scared shitless to have said it at all that Dean doesn't outright laugh at him, but even that's hard to stifle. When Cas doesn't drop the nervous look or admit he was joking, Dean pulls away.

Cas says, "Dean," and reaches to draw him back, but Dean stiffens at the contact and Cas lets go.

He doesn't leave the bed. He doesn't even get up. He stays on his back and stares at the ceiling, but there's a clear divide between them now.

Cas rolls to his side and looks at Dean. Even from just his peripheral, he can see how hurt Cas is.

"Cas," he says, but he stops short when it turns into a croak. Real manly, asshole. He swipes his hand down his eyes and winds up pressing his fingers into the bridge of his nose. His heart is thumping like a beat up dryer, wild and out of control, which is stupid. It's stupid.

"I have money," Cas says. It rushes out of him like he expects to be interrupted. "We can get an apartment. I can go to school--"

"Cas, hey. Stop."

"I've thought about this," Cas tells him, and he's sitting up, which can't be a good thing. Worse, he's starting to get hopeful.

Dean drops his hand back to the bed. "I can't."

Cas' forehead wrinkles. He cycles through emotions before he lands on confusion. "Why?"

Dean finally meets Cas' eyes, hard as that even is for him. He bats at Cas' nearby knee, playfully hitting it with the back of his hand. It's an attempt at levity that utterly crashes and burns. "Cas, come on."

"Why?" Cas repeats.

"I can't follow you to school, man."

"I never assumed you would. But, you could accompany me--"

Dean, with a sigh, pushes into a sitting position as well. His back hits the headboard a little too hard, but he lets the sting radiate through him, happy for the distraction.

Cas joins him, arranging himself beside Dean. Their legs spill out almost the entire length of the tiny ass cot Bobby's never got around to upgrading. Dean remembers him and Cas like this three years ago, five years ago; longer.

"You won't," Cas realizes, his head falling back against the faded wallpaper behind him. Floral print. They'd found it funny, once. Well, gay, actually. Hello irony.

"Can't," Dean corrects. "Sammy..." he starts, but it's all he needs to say. They both know Dean promised his dad once upon a who even gives a shit ago to look after Sam. He's not going to break it for anything.

"But Bobby--"

"He's my little brother, Cas."

It feels like he's picking between Sam and Cas here, but he's not. If he's being honest with himself, Sam has always been his obligation; Cas, though, has always been his choice.

"Will you think about it at least? You don't have to decide now."

It's a lie, but he kicks at Cas' foot anyway and says, "Okay,"

 

&

 

Dean's in a restless mood, spilling tense energy all over the place. Mostly because the closer it gets to the end of summer, the deeper him and Cas get into whatever's going on between them, and that makes it harder for him to want to let it go. Which, of course, only makes him want to drop and run.

It's a messed up, mindfuck of a cycle, especially because at the beginning of next month he _will_ have to let go; and here he is again, wanting to cling even harder like the little bitch he really is.

He's slamming cupboards, looking for food without really even being hungry. It's boredom, mostly, that's pushing him, not to mention all that anxiety doing circles in his head. He's going out of his mind here.

Bobby's sitting at the table with a plate of toast and the newspaper in front of him. He suffers through five minutes of Dean's attitude before kicking out the chair opposite him, his demand clear.

"Sit."

This, Dean realizes, is Bobby playing the role of 'concerned parent,' and for all the ways he's appreciated Bobby stepping up after their dad left, he's still uncomfortable when it comes to expressing his emotions in front of the guy. It, at least, is something John Winchester taught him he still hasn't found a way to grow out of yet. Not like his dad's leather coat he wore for a year or two of blind hero worship before he realized, hey, John Winchester? Kind of an outstanding prick.

"Somethin' on your mind, kid?"

The table's thick between them when Dean sits, it's also a welcome partition, but he still feels exposed by the sincerity and care Bobby's giving him. It makes his walls hike straight up. His guard, too, shoots into place, making towers of his ribcage.

"Nope." He blasts Bobby with a huge smile to prove it. "I'm good."

"Right. You're _good_. 'Cause you ain't the type to lie about your feelings just because some bozo got it in your head you weren't allowed to have 'em."

As usual, the dig at Dean's dad, warranted or not, makes Dean stiffen. He can't keep the edge of defensiveness out of his voice. "Yeah, well, this ain't about him."

"Is it Sam?" Dean says nothing, so Bobby takes his silence as affirmation. More than that, he assumes Dean's nursing wounded feelings, which makes him go all soft in front of him. "You can talk to me, Dean. I'm on your side."

In most matters, Dean trusts Bobby with his life. Hell, he trusts Bobby with _Sam's_ life and that means more to him than his own. But this Cas thing is too new still, and too big, and it's hard enough acknowledging it to himself. No way he can say it out loud.

Bobby seems to get it. There's no pushing, no further prying.

"Alright." That's a sigh. Bobby picks his paper back up, shaking it out to straighten it, and flips right to the 'wanted' ads. After a second or two, he says, "Good as you are," and it's a dig, on purpose, "how about you go upstairs and clean your room?" He peers at Dean over the edge of the newspaper with a put-on smile. "I ask, only 'cause the maid ain't coming."

Dean snorts, but he gets to his feet. "What maid?"

"Exactly."

 

&

 

It's funny. Dean can barely remember what his mom looked like. He's got pictures, sure, and that helps, but when he tries to remember moments that were never photographed -- how she looked first thing in the morning, if her hair was always curly, did her DNA screw up his DNA and that's where all the freckles came from -- he's got zip. Nothing.

They say the first thing you forget is the sound of someone's voice, but Dean? All he's got to do is close his eyes and his mom's in his head singing 'Hey, Jude.'

She had this thing, too, this nighttime ritual, where she'd hold him close, wrap him up in her arms, whisper with lips pressed gently into his hair, "Angels are watching over you."

Funny, like he said, considering, well. Cas.

 

&

 

"Dean. I can't. I need to--"

"Yeah," Dean says, and his voice, like Cas', is rough, straining from the very back of his throat, "go ahead. Do it. Do it, Cas."

In between Dean's legs, which are spread pretty damn wantonly, Cas is on his knees, bracketing Dean in with his hands pressed into the mattress up near Dean's armpits. His eyes are closed and he's breathing in and out through his nose, sighing when Dean runs his hands up the back of his arms.

Slowly, calmer, Cas dips forward, the press of his weight pushing Dean's legs even farther apart. Dean swallows, cursing silently as his strength gives out and his head hits the pillow.

Bobby and Sam left the house a while ago, gone on some pseudo-father/son fishing trip with the intention to 'deepen' their 'relationship.'

Dean and Cas are doing some deepening of their own relationship. And, god, okay, that is a terrible joke. But after almost two months of jerking and sucking each other off, here they finally are, both of them eager to take things to that next level.

Okay, that's a lie. Dean's scared shitless. Probably because he's the one on his back here doing the catching. And even though Cas seemed into the, uh, prep, it still took Dean an embarrassingly long time to relax. Dicks are one thing. Hell, he doesn't even mind having Cas play with his balls. But all the attention that'd been on his ass? A whole lot of freaky.

Cas is a saint, though. Seriously, by way of straight up magic, and maybe a generous amount of lube, he's got Dean slicked up and open enough to get them going. He could be fucking Dean right now, but he's holding back, waiting for Dean to get his crap together.

The fingers up his ass, he can admit, had felt good. Once Cas was able to get more than one in there, anyway. And the whole time Cas was doing, you know, _that_ , he on-and-off sucked Dean's dick, making sure Dean was hard, that he was into it too, so it's not like this has been a one-sided show.

The problem is, Dean can feel Cas' dick against his ass, just nudging there casually, no big deal. Which is obviously the point, only any time -- every time -- Cas breathes out, chest expanding, he rocks forward, just a little, and there's a wet, insistent slide that stresses Dean out all over again.

"Cas, go," Dean says again, more raspy, his hands tightening in the sheets because goddammit he's determined to do this thing.

As instructed, he feels Cas push forward; his hips get lifted off the bed for better leverage, Cas holding onto the sweaty backs of Dean's knees.

That first inch makes Dean's pulse jump, and it's just the tip. Which is something that makes him laugh in his head, because, phrasing. But then coherent thought clears out like a bomb set off and destroyed everything.

Shit. Shit. This is gay sex. Dean is definitely having gay sex. Alright.

He grits his teeth, grabs Cas' ass, and forces him the rest of the way forward.

Cas, totally unprepared, gasps, choking out, "De--" but he doesn't finish. Dean's name turns into a blissed out groan halfway through.

By the time Cas is in balls deep, they're both breathing too hard. Dean's erection has flagged, his boner wrecked completely by the discomfort of having a dick in his poop chute, but Cas with his trembling arms and shaky exhales is ready to blow his load and they've barely even done anything.

"I can't," Cas says, thrusting shallowly like he's trying not to move except he really can't help it.

"Cas, go."

"Dean," Cas tries, staring first at Dean's reddening face, then his very down-for-the-count junk. "You're--"

"Going to punch you in your throat if you don't move. Seriously, Cas," he tells him, and Cas must catch on that if he doesn't get to thrusting, Dean's body has got a mind of its own and, fair warning, it's prepared to evacuate the premises.

So, experimentally, Cas rolls his hips forward. It makes things a little fuller for Dean, adds more pressure, but there's no mindblowing sensation or spiritual revelations that have him swearing off heterosexual sex for good. Just, tension. And not even the good kind.

Then Cas pulls out and thrusts back in, and it's like someone poured gasoline along Dean's spine, then lit a match and dropped it to burn. Arousal licks a path clear up his back, spreading out like tingling flames.

They both gasp, for different reasons, and where Dean is finally starting to feel like there isn't a foreign object lodged up his ass, Cas' response has more to do with the fact that he's penetrating something for the first time. Which is the whole damn point of Dean being the bottom. Call him romantic, but he wanted to make their first time special for Cas since the guy's never properly done this with, you know, anyone. Ever.

Dean's blown him enough times that Cas' stamina is up there near Dean's own, but you wouldn't know that now by the way Cas is keeping his thrusts tense and tight like if he goes any harder, this'll all be over too soon. His jaw is clenched and his eyes have gone glossy, too, and maybe the problem here is Dean. Maybe Cas requires more from a partner than a stiff, nonparticipating body to jam his junk into. Go figure.

Dean slides his hand down his stomach and grabs his own dick. With Cas watching, he starts pumping his fist up and down harder than usual to get it up again. "Yeah," he says encouragingly, low, thick, "come on."

Cas pitches forward suddenly to kiss Dean, and Dean nearly yelps because the new angle makes that fire along Dean's spine explode into something white hot and just as bright. Whatever Cas did, wherever his dick hit, may it hit again, because that was awesome. Even Dean's dick thinks so, leaking and paying attention as it suddenly is.

There are a few more sloppy thrusts on Cas' part that don't do anything special for Dean, but when he gets it just right, it's like the Christmas morning of awesome sex. It zaps Dean's bones and makes every nerve ending in his body go crispy, but goddamn, it's the best feeling in the world, especially because Cas has finally lost himself in his own happy place as well.

It doesn't take long after that; Cas hooks his hands higher up behind Dean's knees, grappling because they're both slippery with sweat, and fucks harder than before. The headboard bangs against the wall and Cas huffs out raggedly. It's Dean's name that's at the end of every breath. Over and over again.

Dean jerks himself off in time to every in-out drag, keeping pace until Cas goes completely still, groaning out low-pitched noises of pleasure Dean's hearing from him for the first time. Cas comes inside Dean like he's never had an orgasm in his life before, harder and longer than ever.

Which means, two tugs later, Dean's coming too, spilling all over his hand.

 

&

 

After, the part of Cas' heart that houses his feelings for Dean seems to grow three sizes, if the amount of sappy gazing is anything to go by.

It's, uh, pretty damn mutual.

 

&

 

The closest they ever get to being busted, they aren't even doing anything.

You know, except debauching each other in the upstairs bathroom.

Cas shows up while Dean is just stepping out of the shower, and instead of waiting for him to finish up, he loses his friggin' mind and corners Dean next to the crapper.

"Cas," Dean says in surprise, startled. His eyes blow open wide. "Bobby--"

"Is downstairs."

Cas eyes the towel Dean's got tucked around his waist like it's done something offensive, all the while creeping in even closer. Dean would be lying if he denied the first twitches of a boner, but mostly his focus is on his heart, which is tapping out a panicky, paranoid beat.

With his mouth gone completely dry, Dean swallows. "Cas," he says.

Cas presses against Dean. "Be quiet," he tells him, still staring at the towel, his fingers curling at the edges of its fabric.

It's like he's powerless, like Cas is the one in charge. It's messing with Dean's head in the best way possible, making him go limp enough to sag onto the closed toilet. Cas' fingers trail from Dean's waist up to his shoulders with that slow collapse, a barely-there grazing that incites goosebumbs more effectively than even the post-shower temperature dip, until suddenly Cas' grip is strong.

Sitting with his legs sprawled and Cas wedged there in between them, Dean is nearly at eye level with Cas' junk. Dean knows his own boner is tenting the towel in an obscene way, but there's something about the obvious outline of Cas' hard-on that turns Dean into an active, if not more dominant, participant. Riding an impulse, Dean leans forward and sucks at Cas through his pants.

At first he's barely adding any pressure; it's only a dry, open-mouthed exploration that's about as sexy as making out with a stiff pair of pants, save for the totally pornographic noises Cas is making in encouragement. His fingers dig into Dean's shoulders, his hips bucking slightly forward to increase the contact.

Dean reaches down and grabs his own dick, tugging it roughly through the towel. His grip tightens once, then twice, two hard squeezes that turn into lazy stroking when the burn spirals through him.

Watching him, Cas' eyes get a couple shades darker, which makes Dean's speed pick back up. He likes doing that, Dean realizes. He likes seeing Cas lose it because of him.

He's still just mouthing at Cas through his pants, but he's snuck his free hand around Cas' waist and dragged him close, keeping him there, which Cas seems to like, if the needy thrust that follows the manhandling is anything to go by. The sound of Dean jacking off is muffled by the towel, which, you know, sort of painful considering as dry of a rub as it is, but they're both groaning and breathing heavily, overly loud with the acoustics of the bathroom.

"Dean," Bobby all of a sudden calls out from down the hallway, "you up here?"

Hearing him, Dean's stomach leaps clear into his throat, blocking so he can't answer back.

Bobby rattles the doorknob.

"Dean?"

Dean scrambles to his feet, grabbing Cas by the arms. His first thought is to shove Cas behind the shower curtain, or, hell, under the sink if they have to, but then Bobby asks, "Cas in there with you?"

Dean and Cas stare at each other in wide-eyed fear. How the hell does Bobby know, holy freaking shit.

The door knob shakes some more, more impatiently this time.

Cas drops to his knees at the toilet and Dean thinks, with startling clarity, that now ain't really the time for praying. Then Cas pushes the back of Dean's knees towards the door and whisper-yells, "Go."

18 is a good age to die, so, to hell with it. He flings the door open, wincing because Bobby's right there leaning casually against the door frame like he's gotten comfy hanging out there for a while.

"About time," he drawls sarcastically, glowering to let Dean know he's not impressed with the wait.

Dean scratches the back of his neck, uncomfortably aware that he's wearing nothing but a towel. Though, thankfully the sudden terror has nuked his boner entirely. "Bobby. Hi. Hey. We were just--"

The toilet flushes, cutting off Dean's babbling and stealing Bobby's attention.

"Everything okay there, Cas?"

Dean looks too, turning to see Cas huddled over the toilet like he's just been sick. His hair is mussed, his cheeks are red, and he's still got that sex-high glaze to his eyes that could, Dean's realizing all of a sudden, be mistaken for a fever. All Dean sees is a Cas that looks like he was well on his way to a thoroughly given orgasm, but it fools Bobby. At least, he thinks it does.

Dean adds, "Flu," with a half-smile thrown Cas' way, like that sums up the whole bathroom encounter and, aw, ain't Cas a little trooper?

Bobby's eyes flick from Cas, to Dean, down to Dean's towel, and back up again, a whole lot of accusation picked up along the way. "Right," he drawls. "The flu. Why do I ever bother? Dinner's in ten. Cas is free to join us. Should his flu miraculously clear up, of course."

Dean smiles uncomfortably until Bobby rolls his eyes and leaves, headed back downstairs.

Coast clear, Cas bolts to his feet, panicked again.

They nearly trip over each other on the way to Dean's room, adrenaline making them clumsy, and it's only once the door's shut behind them that they breathe easy again.

It might be hysteria, but Dean laughs. It's shaky with his nerves shot to hell, but it's pretty genuine. It feels like a close call. Like they actually got away with it. Holy crap, they're awesome.

"Flu," he laughs.

"It's not funny, Dean."

"Little bit," Dean argues, grinning. All he gets for his suddenly chipper mood is a pissy glare that implies everything about the past five minutes is Dean's fault, including the post-shower groping. "Cas," Dean softly laughs, "get your ass over here."

It nearly gets them busted again, but eleven minutes later they finally finish what they started.

 

&

 

Outside of the first four years of his life, the longest stretch of time Dean's spent with his dad was third grade through seventh. Not the whole time, but John Winchester, those years, suddenly remembered he was a father and attempted to do something about it.

It was weird, Dean remembers, not being at Bobby's, but in a way, it was exciting. It was an adventure, at least at first. John Winchester, though something of an alcoholic, was renowned as a bounty hunter. Not the lame ass kind from TV or books where it's always a guy in a ripped leather vest chasing perps through parking lots, but the real kind, like a private investigator. That meant they never stayed in one place for too long.

Once, in Wisconsin, they buckled down in an actual apartment for five months. His dad even tried out sobriety, but it didn't stick. It never did.

Before that, before Wisconsin and the landlady that kicked them out, Dean remembers overhearing phone calls. Sam, six-years-old, asleep in the bed beside him, curled up underneath a small mountain of thin, scratchy motel blankets, and their dad whispering outside the single room, snippets of the conversation he was trying to keep quiet making its way to Dean.

 _'They're my damn boys,'_ and _'I'm the one who knows what's best for them_ , Bobby.'

And even then, even when he was just a kid who knew to answer 'yes, sir' when being spoken to, who thought his father hung the freaking moon, who had obedience drilled into him as natural as breathing -- even then Dean was homesick for the blue-eyed boy back home.

 

&

 

"Holy... jesus christ," Dean marvels.

In front of him and Cas both is the weathered remains of what had once, in his memory anyway, been a bad ass treehouse, built at the age of eleven in the woods way behind Cas' house. They'd done it during the summer, when Dean's dad had figured two growing boys could do with a set routine, which meant three months back at Bobby's. Now, a solid five years since he's even thought of the damn thing, he sees it for what it is: a piece of shit.

Cas goes up to the tree and starts thumping his open hands against it. It doesn't collapse on top of him like they're both genuinely expecting it to, so Cas curls his hand around the bark and smiles at Dean. "Want to?"

Dean just barely starts to grin in response -- hell yeah, he wants to -- before Cas digs his heels in and hoists himself up. There's a strangely exciting mood, partially because of the nostalgia, that settles among them once they've both crawled into the cramped space some fifteen feet above the ground.

Dean remembers spending practically the whole summer out here, hiding from the adults, and Sam. Hell if he can recall how they even constructed the thing, outside of hammering nails and pieces of boards into a box-shape, but it's pretty obvious now the thing was done up by a couple of kids who had no clue what they were doing.

Sunlight trickles into the small fort through the entranceway and a window eleven-year-old Cas sawed out. It's not bright inside, but Dean can see Cas looking around, the memories hitting hard. They saw a girl's boobs for the first time in here. In a magazine, but still. Once, when Cas' parents were fighting, Dean offered to live in their treehouse with him, even if Bobby said he couldn't.

Dean swallows, overcome, when Cas creeps in close, just as caught up in the rush of their remembered childhood. He crowds Dean, caging him in. He's on his hands and knees, one hand braced on the floor high up between Dean's legs. They definitely never did anything like this when they were younger, though Dean remembers sporting some awkward stiffies when the skin rags came out.

Then Cas blows his whole damn mind and says, "I thought about this, back then," nuzzling his face into the crook of Dean's neck.

When Cas starts sucking the sensitive skin there, Dean can barely string together two consecutive thoughts. Somehow he laughs, low and rough, and manages, just as low and rough, "You mean..."

"That I have wanted you, all of you, from my earliest memories of attraction?" Cas licks a stripe clear up Dean's neck, stopping only to bite lightly at his jaw. "What do you think?"

That it's too damn huge to process, for one. That he is horny as fuck now, is another.

He doesn't answer. Instead, he grabs behind Cas' head and slants them until their mouths crash together. They both skip the chaste first kiss and go straight into the open-mouthed make out, tongues clashing, teeth knocking.

Dean winds up on his back with a floor board that was never nailed properly into place jarring into his shoulder blade, but his brain only briefly acknowledges it as an annoyance then forgets all about it, probably because Cas is lowering down on top of him.

They kiss again, but it's soft. Gun to his head, Dean might even call it tender. That slowed down mood breaks though as soon as Dean grabs two fistfuls of Cas' ass and humps into him from below. "Since we were kids, huh? You perv."

Cas makes a noise that might as well have been mouthed directly against Dean's dick for the way it starts twitching. There's no denial when Cas grinds down and says, "Yes."

Dean never knew. Even when visions of Cas started showing up in his spank bank, he figured it was one-sided. Hell, some days he's half-convinced this whole Dean-and-Cas thing is just a really vivid hallucination.

He must be thinking that extra loud, because Cas pulls back. As far as he can, anyway, with Dean's hands still digging into his ass. "You didn't realize?"

Dean snorts softly. "No clue."

"I watched you once, at Lisa's, while you did yardwork."

Dean's eyebrows leap to his hairline in amusement. "Wow. Stalker."

"I was curious. And you were boring, by the way." He blurts, "I turned down Meg. Several times."

Yeah, well. "Meg's psycho."

"I gave you a ring when we were twelve."

"It was candy!"

Cas' brow furrows. "You really had no idea?"

"That my nerdy best friend wanted to bone me big time? Cas, I thought you were, you know, one of them late bloomers, or, hell, you didn't care about sex."

Cas rolls his hips into Dean's, so that Dean can feel through their layers of denim just how hard he is. It's dirty as fuck, which means Dean loves it. "And what do you think now?"

Dean laughs lowly and freely, the sound spilling out of him from the back of his throat. "That my nerdy best friend's a giant horn dog--"

Cas kisses him to shut him up.

As per Cas' depraved teenaged fantasies, Dean blows him right there in the treehouse.

 

&

 

Later, when they're leaving and Cas is already halfway down the tree, Dean catches sight of their initials carved in the wood over the entrance. He remembers that. Cas had taken a screwdriver and etched his initials first, and Dean used his pocket knife to add his own after. Underneath, Cas had written 'forever' and Dean remembers that, too; the small, secret smiles they shared, them two against the whole damn world.

He slides his hand across it now and tries not to think of it as goodbye when he pats the splintered wood and follows after Cas.

 

&

 

"You're so lucky, Cas," Sam says, throwing pebbles at one of the junkers Dean's working on in Bobby's salvage yard. He's aiming for the driver side mirror, but he keeps missing and thwacking Dean instead where Dean's chest deep under the car's hood.

"Knock it off, shrimp."

Sam blows out a breath that's supposed to let Dean know he's feeling repressed, dumping his pile of rocks near one of the rear wheels that's gone flat. Cas, leaning against the sun-warmed car beside Dean, smiles at the brother's banter.

"Dean is bad-tempered around me as well," he shares with Sam as if he's welcoming the kid into some elite club. It makes Dean snort.

"Ha."

"Yeah, but I meant, you get to leave. I wish I was going to college."

If Cas notices the way Dean tenses and moves away, just a little, he doesn't say anything. He does say, "I thought so too, once. That I was lucky. And now..." He's looking at Dean, even though Dean keeps his head down, messing with the dipstick and checking on the oil. "I'm not so certain anymore. I have... doubts."

Dean is not a good person. He knows this because the second he hears that doubt in Cas' voice, relief shoots all the way through him.

Sam scoffs, saying, "But it's so boring here! I'm leaving as soon as I get into Stanford. That's where I'm going, I already know," he gloats.

Glad for the chance to lighten the mood, Dean tosses his oily rag at his brother. "They have to accept you first, you know. Probably make you get a haircut."

"If I had a choice," Cas says, and he's just as serious as before, but now he's scuffing his shoes on the ground, staring at his feet. He looks up to tell Dean, "I'd stay."

It means something huge, but Sam cuts through the moment by picking up some of those previously abandoned rocks to fling through the yard. There are tiny, muted collisions that pang after a three second delay. "Why? Schools here suck. Plus, you're like the smartest person I know, Cas, you can go to _Harvard._ "

Which is true. Cas is some freak genius that knows like five different languages and can do all sorts of insane math problems in his head.

"Drop it, Sam. Cas knows what he's doing."

"But--"

"I said drop it," he repeats, bossy enough that things get serious, at least for a couple of minutes.

Sam scoops up a new dusty handful of pebbles and, after shrugging, starts tossing them at the windows again.

 

&

 

Cas has his own car, but it's this crappy Honda Civic that Dean is going to never, ever be okay with. It was made in the 90's. Just, no.

When he jogs over to Cas' late the following morning, Cas is piling a bunch of boxes into the trunk of that shit mobile. Dean makes out 'books' and 'linens' written in black marker on the top of them before they disappear into the back space.

"Hey," he says, walking up. Cas must notice Dean's brain working overtime to figure out what's going on because he tenses and slides awkwardly two steps over to block Dean's view.

"Dean. Hi."

All at once, it hits him. Cas is packing for college. Knowing it'd happen eventually and seeing it actually happen are two totally different things. It's staggering, almost. He thinks he plays it off like nothing's wrong, but then again, he's gone pretty numb, his mind zeroing on 'Cas is leaving' and looping that over and over.

"Oh, Dean. Hello," Naomi calls, appearing on their front porch. She's dressed as immaculately as ever, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. As she carefully descends the couple of steps with another box in her hand -- this one says 'kitchen' -- she gives him a bright smile. "We didn't expect to see you. Did we, Castiel?"

Cas is staring at Dean, and Dean realizes he must look like an idiot. He's practically gaping, his emotions bouncing all over the place. That initial shock is still there. "Hey, Mrs. Shurley," he eventually gets out, ignoring Cas.

"It's good to see you." She stops near Cas, placing the box beside the others in the trunk. After, she wipes her hands and meets Dean's eyes again, still forcing that same fake smile. "How have you been? It's been so long since Castiel's brought you around."

Yeah, probably because any time Dean's over, Naomi watches the two of them like she's going to chuck a Bible at their heads the first sign of sinful wrong-doing. Even now, just standing here in the driveway, his skin is crawling.

"Well," she says, glancing between Dean and Cas both, "don't just stand there. Come on in. We could use another set of hands."

Dean swallows, feeling panicky. He hasn't been inside Cas' house in forever. It always invokes a strong mixture of nostalgia and dread.

"I believe Dean already has plans," Cas attempts, finally breaking his stare to look at his mother.

"There's a difference between belief and knowledge, Castiel. Do you believe he has plans or do you know he has plans?"

Cas goes rigid at his mom's needling tone. He stands up straight and locks his gaze just to the right of her. It's hard to watch, for the fact that it's happening to Cas at all and for the reminder of Dean's dad commanding him to obey in similar ways.

"I can help," Dean blurts. It draws Naomi's attention his way, and her scrutiny makes him squirm. So he lies. "Sam wanted me to watch something with him, but, whatever, TV rots your brain, right? I can help. Ma'am," he tacks on uncomfortably when she just keeps staring.

Pleased, Naomi's lips curl into a grin. "Thank you, Dean."

Once they're through the front door, Dean feels the past hit him like a full-on whammy. He lived in this house before. For only a couple of weeks until Bobby took over as full-time surrogate parent, but it's still such a weird feeling.

Naomi drifts towards the stairs, then turns and clasps her hands. Again, that creepy Stepford bitchbot smile is on her face. "Well, I'll leave you two boys to it."

That's their cue to bolt up the stairs, which they do. The whole way up Dean tries not to pay attention to the pictures on the wall, considering he's in some of them.

"Jesus, Cas," he complains once they're safe in Cas' room. Not that it's his fault his mom gives Dean both the heebs and the jeebs. He could've used a little warning, is all. "I thought we were gonna drive today?"

Cas sags against the door, his face crumpling for just a second. Cas is not a crier, so the fact that he's on the verge of it now immediately raises some flags. Dean feels his own emotions dip south like they're tethered together, the two of them.

"Cas?"

Cas swipes his eyes and gets a hold of himself. He straightens back up and moves to collect a couple of blue ribbons off a tack board near the desk by his bed. "I need to pack."

Dean just stands there, waiting. "Okay?" He doesn't like the way this is starting to feel like rejection.

Then he looks around and notices how bare Cas' room is. The posters he remembers Cas having on the wall are gone. The bookshelf beside his closet, the one Dean and Cas had painted red and black because they thought it'd look cool only now it's chipped and peeling, is emptied out.

Almost accusatory, Dean stalks over and pulls open Cas' closet. There's nothing in there but a couple of too-small sweaters and a tangle of hangers that swing and clatter together.

Dean covers his mouth with his hand. There's a lump in his throat that he swallows down, but it bobs right back up. When he turns back around, Cas is clutching a pile of folded up shirts in his hand. Dean recognizes his old AC/DC concert tee on top. "Cas?"

Cas doesn't say anything, just gives him a stony look back. After a second, Dean realizes that's all he's gonna get out of him.

A lifetime of experience makes it easy to ignore the hurt and turn it into anger.

"Fine," he says, leaving. He only stops to snatch his t-shirt and get caught in a stare-off with Cas. But that's easy to break out of too, and when he does, he hears Cas call, "Dean," after him, his voice breaking in the middle.

Dean keeps going. He makes it clear out the house, but Naomi's there on the porch, leaning against the rail.

He winces when the door shuts too loudly behind him.

"Dean," she says in surprise. "You're leaving already?"

"Yeah, uh." He takes a wide step around her, moving slow. "Bobby wanted me back at the house, so."

She raises her head and stares him down over the narrow line of her nose. "So, you had plans after all."

"Yeah. I guess so."

He's almost off the porch entirely when Naomi stops him. "Dean," she says, making him close his eyes before turning her way. "You know you're welcome here, anytime. Even with Castiel moving on."

Dean barely even notices when the front door swings open, even though it's Cas and he's saying Dean's name. Dean staggers down the last two steps, then turns on his heel, nuking every last damn emotion, and makes a swift exit, his boots crunching over their rocky driveway, Cas still calling after him.

He hears Naomi say, "This is how it has to be, Castiel," and worse than the flare of pain it causes is how Cas doesn't even argue.

 

&

 

Here's the thing about Dean: when he started high school, he was good at math. Like, abnormally so, he scored off the charts on the placement tests they make you take. What he figured out right away is that it made people expect something from him, so when classes began, he failed. On purpose. He got hell for those report cards and the guidance counselors couldn't figure out how a bright kid like Dean was slipping through the cracks, but you know what that taught Dean? Better to fail and fail knowingly then try, fail, and disappoint a bunch of people.

Bottom line, Dean learned about power.

 

&

 

The knock on the door less than an hour later isn't a surprise. Sam lets Cas in. Dean stays in his room, listening to Cas climb the stairs. Then his door opens.

"Hello, Dean."

Cas sounds nervous. It makes Dean afraid, it makes him terrified of what's happening next, so he blurts out, "We have to stop."

Cas closes the door behind him but stays where he is. "Stop... what?"

"I can't do it anymore, Cas."

"Dean..."

"This was pretty damn messed up," he tells him as evenly as he can. There's almost zero inflection.

He's rehearsed this. Done it a hundred times in his head. It feels like he's been having a version of this conversation with himself since the first time this all started, honestly.

Cas looks like Dean's leading to a punchline he already knows he won't get, like it's some big joke at his expense. His eyes narrow.

Dean turns and walks over to his bed, picking up a car magazine that he flips through without even seeing it. "Not that it wasn't fun, but, c'mon. I'm not gay." He doesn't feel like himself as he says it. He feels like a grade-A asshole, but there's almost something about Cas' hurt expression when he turns back around that fuels him on, like it proves to Dean he's not worth it.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Sex, Cas. I mean, you're usually pretty clueless, man, but this?" He makes a whistling to noise to say Cas is beyond his level of help. It's mean, but that's good. Mean is good.

"I don't understand."

"Look, you're going to college--"

"And you can come with me."

"We want different things."

Cas says, like it should already be obvious, "I want you." It knocks Dean flat on his ass, how easy Cas can drop that like it costs him nothing. He's not scared of what it means, it's a freaking fact of life for him, as true and unmovable as any proven science.

"You say that now," Dean says, self-deprecation kicking in. He didn't even mean for it to come out. It's not the point, it's definitely not part of the script.

Cas comes forward, carefully and warily, until he's in front of Dean, staring into his eyes so intensely Dean can't meet the look back. "I would have said it years ago if I thought you'd let me. Dean. Please. Look at me."

Dean doesn't. "You can't stay either."

"If you're here--"

"It's stupid. We're friends. I can email you."

Cas takes a minute. "Okay. But that doesn't change our feelings--"

"I'm not going to be your gay thing, Cas. Long distance, whatever."

"Why do you keep saying that? I don't care about sexual orientation."

Dean just shrugs. Inside, his heart is jackhammering and there's a sour feeling in his stomach, like he's going to be sick, but on the outside he is cool, blank. "I don't know what you want me to say, Cas."

"I love you," Cas tells him forcefully, this desperate, hopeful attempt to rewrite the past few minutes. Or, hell, their entire summer, for all Dean knows.

It almost breaks him, and Cas catches that, his hope intensifying. But there it is again, that fear curling up Dean's chest, wrapping around his sternum. It hangs on and won't let go, which makes it easy for him to snap, "Yeah, well. Don't."

And then Dean storms out of his own house. He gets in his car and gets her engine growling, peeling out of there fast enough that her tires slip over the gravel, but he straightens her out almost as soon as she starts skidding and sets off with no idea where he's going.

 

&

 

"Dean?"

Dean gets home a few hours later only to find Sam curled up on the couch with Cartoon Network muted on the TV. When the front door closes after him, Sam sits up. In the dark, he looks like a little kid. When he says Dean's name, he sounds scared. The kind of scared he used to sound a couple years back, them sharing the same motel bed and their dad gone for days. It breaks something inside of Dean.

"What're you still doing awake? C'mon, get upstairs," he makes himself say, sliding out of his coat. He's too tired to hang it up, so he drops it on the floor and knows he's in for some bitching from Bobby come breakfast time.

Sam swings his legs off the edge of the couch. His hair's sticking up in the back where he's trying to grow it long. Dean keeps telling him he's gonna wind up looking like a girl, but it hasn't made Sam change his mind yet. "You left and you didn't say goodbye."

Dean hasn't seen Sam cry since before their dad disappeared that last time. He's close to tears now, and more than anything, more than the entire Cas thing, even, it's what pummels through every single one of Dean's defenses.

He joins Sam at the couch and cuffs his hand around his neck. Sam is so freaking small. Dean forgets that sometimes.

"Sorry about that, Sammy," he starts, and his throat is closing up, his voice gone thick.

Sam yanks away from Dean with a glare. "Plus, you were a dick to Cas."

Coming from Sam? Who can barely spit out the cuss word without blushing? It makes Dean feel two inches tall. It also makes him realize Sam doesn't know the whole story. He sighs. "Sam--"

"No, Dean! Why?" he asks, and his eyes are getting watery. His voice wavers when he demands, "Why did you do it? All Cas ever does is help out but you couldn't even be nice to him so now he's gone too."

"He'll be back," he tries. Worse, part of him actually believes it. "You know Cas. Guy's like a weed. You can't get rid of him."

"He said goodbye," Sam tells him, and Dean absorbs the words like they're bricks set down on top of him.

It takes him a second, but then he gets out, "What?"

"You left and then Cas came down and said he was leaving, and I said, 'because Dean's a jerk?' and he said he didn't think he was coming back here for a while--"

"Wait, hold up."

"Why did you have to fight with him? He's my friend too!" Sam bursts up from the couch. Dean tries to stop him, but Sam wiggles out of his grasp, his whole chest heaving from the weight of his emotions.

"Sam, just calm down a damn second--"

"You make everyone leave!" Sam accuses. The way it rushes out of him, Dean knows Sam's saying it just to hurt him, but that's exactly what it does, especially because Sam yells, "I wish it was you who'd go!"

The light flicks on suddenly. Bobby's standing there in the entranceway wearing a tank top and pair of cotton pajama pants. His gaze is planted squarely on Sam, disbelief written plain as day on it. "What in _the hell_ is going on here?" he barks, but Sam runs past him and stomps his way up the stairs. A second later, his door slams, so Bobby pins that wide-eyed stare on Dean.

"Talk. Now," he demands.

Dean scrubs his hand down his eyes. His first instinct, as always, is to protect his brother. "Puberty thing," he lies. "It'll blow over."

Bobby comes stepping into the room, one menacing footfall after the other. "Do I look like I'm in the mood to be b.s.'ed with? You better come up with a better answer than that."

Dean swallows. He's getting that look from Bobby that makes him want to push back as much as it makes him want to confess every awful thing he's ever done. "Bobby..."

Bobby sinks slowly onto the edge of the coffee table in front of Dean, close enough that Dean's swallowed up in his shadow. He rubs his hands down his thighs, like a nervous habit, which strikes Dean as nuts because -- it's Bobby. Bobby's never been scared of anything. "I ever tell you about my friend Rufus?"

It's a change in conversation Dean's not sure how to deal with. "The guy with the cabin?"

They've gone there once or twice on what Bobby's called 'vacations' but what Sam and Dean know as the ninth circle of hell. It's beautiful out there in the woods, but it's also the middle of nowhere, which means no cellphone reception, no internet, and no TV.

"That'd be the one," Bobby tells him, and his voice is oddly affectionate. "The two of us, me and Rufus, we grew up thick as thieves since practically the day I was born. Only I had me a real mean son of a bitch of a daddy who thought men were supposed to have one kind of relationship and one kind only."

All of a sudden, Dean can see where this is going. Bobby knows. He knows about him and Cas. Dean's whole head fills with the noise of his panic and he only snaps out of it when Bobby places a hand on his shoulder.

"Now, I'm not saying we ever did anything my dad already figured we were doing, but friendship like that, where you're so close you're brothers one day and something more the next? Dean, there ain't nothing about that you have to hide."

Carefully, Dean looks up at him. He can't remember the last time he felt this scared. It's like the whole world's about to change on him and he's nowhere near ready. "Bobby, I'm not. I don't..."

Bobby slides his hand up to cup Dean's jaw, and he holds onto him like that with a look of such sadness, it physically hurts. "Cas is a good kid," Bobby says softly. "That's all I'm saying." He pats Dean's cheek twice, staring a beat longer, and then finally gets up.

Dean is rooted in place, some emotion unfurling inside him he doesn't have a name for but is almost like relief.

Bobby says, "And pick up your jacket, this ain't some damn barn," before flicking the light back off, leaving Dean in the dark.

There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

 

&

 

There's a cassette on Dean's nightstand, when he finally makes it to his room. His and Cas' names are scrawled on it in Cas' handwriting, underlined twice, neat and written in Sharpie. As soon as he sees it, his stomach slinks clear down to his toes.

Fuck Cas, anyway. Dean grabs the tape and drops it in his waste basket. It clatters dully and lands just as anticlimactically, but even so, fuck Cas. Fuck Cas, fuck Cas, fuck fuck fuck --

Dean snatches the tape out of the garbage with a snarl, breathing way more heavily than he needs to be. His shoulders are heaving and his breath is hitching and holy shit, jesus christ, hold up. He's actually crying.

Not soul-wracking sobs, but there are tears in his eyes enough to make his vision blurry. His chest hurts. His head hurts. If he was a chick and this was a movie, some sucky love song would pluck quietly in the background to juice all the angst out of his misery, but it's real life and real pain and the last time he remembers an ache this bad his dad was dropping him and Sammy and most of their belongings off at Bobby's with that fake smile and the son-of-a-bitch was lying, 'see you soon, kiddo.'

Dean sticks the cassette into the old boombox he's got on his nightstand. He presses play and slides down until his ass hits the floor.

Robert Plant sings out right away, some song Dean knows on a cellular level. His heart lurches. He reaches up and fastforwards a little. More Zep, some Metallica after that. Pink Floyd.

Dean stops again on Morrissey begging, 'please, please, please let me get what I want.'

It's Dean's music. All of it. He gave the bastard total control, and Cas still picked _him._

 

&

 

For two days, Dean is planted firmly in the land of denial.

Sam, when he's not trying to wither Dean by power of glare alone, is silent and mopey and ignoring him, while Bobby on the other hand keeps giving Dean these pointed 'worked through your homosexual crisis yet?' stares that make him equal parts want to grab the nearest chick and make out with her just to prove that he still can, and wallow because, fine, missing Cas has become something of a full time job.

It takes two days, like he said.

 

&

 

In the index of Dean's life, guaranteed, there'll be a long ass list archiving all the incredibly dumb shit he's done.

The time he dared a six-year-old Sam to lick some motel water fountain, for instance. The kid wound up with one of them bacterial infections bad enough that Dean swore up and down the entire week Sam was sick that he'd never pull another prank again.

Mixing mustard into his pb&j, that's another one.

But this right now ain't gonna be one.

At home, in his room, there's a note on his bed. His closet's been raided of the essentials. That old R2-D2 Star Wars piggy bank he's had since forever is missing its riches of $31, but it, along with the savings account Dean is old enough to have emptied out earlier in the evening, will get him where he's going.

Where _they're_ going.

Dean's got the Impala parked down at the end of the road, her engine growling softly just so he's got something to listen to. There's a cassette in the tape deck, but Dean's not really in a jinxing mood.

Time crawls from three after six to four after six; Dean's already swigged down two cups of coffee, more for liquid courage than energy. If anything, though, he's jittery and nervous.

Finally, fuck it. That's the thought that bursts through his head. Fuck it. He thinks it as he kills the engine, as he climbs out of his car. Again as he treads as quietly as possible up the familiar paved driveway that leads to Cas'.

Then, he's there. All around him the sky is purple from the sun manhandling the moon elsewhere, the darkness of night rapidly turning into the light of dawn. The grass under Dean's shoes is slippery with morning dew and the crickets are pretty pissed about their night cut short, a nearby group of them chirping their loud complaints.

Dean crouches down and gathers a few rocks. And then he stands and tosses one of them at Cas' window. He does that three more times before the curtain flutters. Dean's heart does the same.

When Cas glances down, he seems to already know who he's going to find standing in a wet patch of grass outside of his house at stupid o'clock in the morning.

Dean smiles up at him and waves anyway, just this side of cocky.

The curtain flutters once more when Cas disappears.

Which, good thing? Bad thing? Dean considers the options in his mind. Just to cover his bases, he also thinks one last 'fuck it.'

He's prepared to scoop up another handful of rocks to get Cas' attention again, but the front door creaks open from ten feet away and Dean's courage takes a swift, suicidal dive.

He drops the rocks and swipes his hands clean on his pants while Cas comes forward off the porch.

"Hey," he makes himself say.

"What do you want, Dean?"

"Gee, nice to see you too." Cas just narrows his eyes and waits for Dean to make sense of things, unhelpful in assisting Dean make this a less awkward moment. You know, considering the drama of their last encounter and all.

There's something that's just so _Cas_ about that. All at once, Dean loses the urge to be glib. He gets serious fast, and Cas, eyes widening now, catches on.

"So," Dean gets out gruffly, "not exactly breaking news here, but I'm what you'd sometimes call a grade-A dickbag."

Cas repeats, "Sometimes?" in a tone that implies there ought to be a higher occurrence rate than that.

Dean huffs quietly, his eyes turning soft. "I screw up, Cas. That's what I do. Especially when I'm scared. Hell, you know that." A pause. "Man, all this time and you have no idea how bad you scare me, do you?"

Cas' voice is as tight as Dean's is. "Like you're the only one," he says. Accuses, actually. "I told you, I said how many months ago now that I was afraid--"

"Yeah, Cas, big gay panic! Hello, feeling it too. But, damn it." Dean, for something to do, paces a small circle until he's right back where he started, in front of a tensely wound up Cas. "I'm scared to lose you," he admits, dropping it like a confession that's been forced out of him. "Not just regular scared, either, I'm a whole mess of screwed up. Dude, I fantasize nightly about letting all the air out of your tires because I know it's only a matter of time before you're off to where-ever-the-hell New Hampshire and I'm -- I'm the guy you leave behind."

"Dean," Cas says, and Dean can't stand to hear the pity in it.

"Whatever this summer was, Cas," he says, his voice cracking, "whatever happened, you gotta know you're my best friend. Whatever else there was, there's always, always, gonna be that. I kinda need that from you."

Somehow in the middle of Dean's sappy spilling of his guts, Cas closed the distance between them so that now he's in front of Dean with a hand on his shoulder, an expression on his face that's as honest and pained as Dean's own.

"How can you think otherwise?" he says to him, so gently, so understanding. Dean lifts his shoulders up in a barely-there shrug to convey the fact that he's an insecure son-of-a-bitch, what else is new. Also, the Earth is round. For some reason the gesture makes Cas smile, though it's small, affectionate. "Dean," he says, like it's his own term of endearment.

"This was a helluva lot easier when we were kids," Dean admits sourly. Yeah, they had some tough goodbyes growing up, all them times Dean's dad came around only to displace him and Sam, but those separations never felt final. Not like this.

This time there's no shared school year to drag them back together, there's no more childhood tether that makes them Dean-and-Cas.

"You know, you could always--" Cas starts, still hopeful, but he doesn't bother to finish because they both know Dean's not about to uproot if it means leaving Sam behind. He's got to stick around here, if only to make sure Sam doesn't grow his hair out girl-style.

The look they share next is sad and it makes a lump of similar emotions climb into then lodge itself inside Dean's throat while Cas' grip on Dean's shoulder tightens like he won't ever let go.

Both of them lean forward. Dean wraps his arm around Cas and breathes his name out.

"Let me drive you," he says, his face pressed against the side of Cas's neck. Cas' response is a slow inhale that makes Dean echo with a dragged out exhale. "I can't stay, not for too long, but, you. Me. Roadtrip? That I can do. Hell, Cas, think of all the diners."

Bobby'll kill him for this. Sam, too. But he's gotta do it, he has to.

All of a sudden, Cas' porch light flicks on.

The front door opens on squeaky hinges and Naomi descends wearing a house robe, all freshly woken up and slightly frazzled but still scary intense.

"Castiel," she says, hissing it out, but the craziest thing is how she doesn't sound shocked to see Dean; she sounds pretty damn clued in actually, like she knows exactly what's going on out here.

Dean's unwound himself from around Cas, obviously, he doesn't have a deathwish, but they each still keep a grip on the other's sleeve, standing side-by-side as a cautiously united front.

Because he's always been an asshole, Dean dials up the charm and ducks his shoulder, grinning flippantly at Cas' mom. "Hey, Mrs. Shurley."

She ignores that to tighten her robe around her waist, facing off with Dean and Cas both. Insanely, Dean notices she's wearing matching fuzzy slippers. "Explain, now. What's the meaning of this?"

Cas, when Dean looks over at him, seems to wilt under the demand. Which is one hell of a mood killer. Dean's heart, still crammed somewhere high up his throat, loses its bravado and free falls back down.

But then Cas straightens. More than that, he locks his mom in a defiant gaze like all of a sudden, here on his front lawn, he's developed a rebellious streak. "I'm going," he announces before clarifying, pointlessly, "with Dean."

So, of course Dean starts beaming at Naomi, unwilling -- unable -- to control the pride and the pleasure chasing through him.

Only, Naomi's face goes soft. Dean's braced for an argument, hell, him and Cas both are, they're literally standing together like they're expecting to be physically pried apart, but that's not what happens. Understanding dawns on Naomi. This, she seems to concede, is a battle already lost.

"Okay," she tells Cas, tells them both. She breathes out, not quite calm, not exactly convinced it's the right choice either, but. Close enough. "Alright, Castiel."

Cas' grip slips; he grabs for Dean's hand.

 

&

 

Forty minutes later, Dean's peeling onto the highway.

Cas is next to him, his hair already a mess because after moving all his worldly possessions into the trunk of Dean's car, the first thing he did when he got inside, besides make a grab for his copy of _1984_ still stowed away in the glove compartment, was roll down the window.

Leaning forward, wind whipping in his face, Dean grins big.

He hits play on the tape deck; Cas' mixtape rambles on.

 

&

the end

**Author's Note:**

> Roadtrip sequel anyone?!


End file.
